


rampant

by h_vane



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Battle Bros, Canon Compliant, Canonical Minor Character Death, F/M, Gen, Missing Scene, Original Character(s), accidental religious revivals, angry mages and reasonable adult authority figures take on the plot to Lioness Rampant, like she's canon but I'm giving her actual character, statecraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 43,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25136770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/h_vane/pseuds/h_vane
Summary: “Queenscove,” he says with a half-hearted glance up. “You’re in the palace late in the working day. What new piece of his revitalized government has our king-to-be been asking your opinion of?”Every single conversation with Thom reminds her exactly why it was that she could go from “neutral” to “keen on disemboweling” in such a short span of time. That’s not important, but it helps her thoroughly quash the fantasy of conjuring a ball of water and dropping it on his head.or: angry mages and reasonable adult authority figures take on the plot to lioness rampant.
Relationships: Baird of Queenscove/Wilina of Queenscove
Comments: 90
Kudos: 137





	1. Chapter 1

> _Myles sighed and shook his head. “I know that a number of people in the palace with the Gift were angry with Thom for days afterward. I’ve been hearing some odd rumors—” He stopped for a moment, as if unsure of what to say, then went on. “I have reason to believe Thom may have been trying his hand at—raising the dead.” (The Woman Who Rides Like a Man.)_

Baird of Queenscove wakes up on a cot in his own infirmary the day after All Hallows Eve and can’t quite figure out how he got there. There’s a lit brazier in the corner, and his wife is sitting in a chair next to it, with eight-week-old Neal asleep on her chest.

“Good to see you awake, my love,” whispers Wilina. She looks deadly serious and like she hasn’t slept all night. Her hair is still pinned in elaborate loops, but it’s also coming down halfway in the back and her face is drawn. “Here, if you can hold on to Neal, Harailt and I and the rest of the Council of Mages need to have a word with Lord Thom.”

“What word?” croaks Baird, cautiously pushing himself upright in bed and reaching out for Neal. His body feels like he’s fallen off a horse, but aches and pains aside he’s steady enough to take their infant son and hold him close.

“‘Disemboweling’ has a nice ring to it, I think,” Wilina says poisonously. “Although I expect Harailt and Gareth are going to tell me no.”

She leans over to press her forehead against his and he can feel her shaking, just slightly. “No major casualties. You seem to have been the worst off out of anyone,” she added, “but Neal felt it too. Whatever Thom was doing, it had a blowback that hit everyone with the Gift in the palace and parts of the city too.”

“That, of course,” she says, stepping back, green eyes shining and cold, “is unacceptable. And if Lord Thom didn’t know that before, he will now.”

Baird is trained to fight, sure—the master-at-arms at Queenscove is always after him to run around the house grounds, practice his sword forms—but he has never had the urge to raise his hand in violence against another man. He’s reconsidering the impulse now.

Wilina, on the other hand, is the daughter of King Jasson’s greatest general, and she grew up learning knife-fighting tricks with her brother in the stable yard and scaling mountains in the southern desert with her father’s aides-de-camp. She holds a mastery from the Carthaki University in theoretical abstract magic. She is the only woman on the Tortallan Council of Mages, and he will happily hand over the task of being their family’s sword of justice in the matter of Thom of Trebond to her, while he makes very sure that nothing has harmed their son.

* * *

Wilina leaves the infirmary, after she’s directed one of Baird’s assistants towards his room and relieved the boy of one of his cups of tea. With some kind of endurance and wakefulness powder mixed in, it tastes horrible, but it clears her head enough that she can find a mirror, finish re-pinning her hair, and then make it to the meeting point where part of the council is waiting and planning their next move.

Thom of Trebond’s rooms are in the oldest wing of the palace, one where the corridors connect unexpectedly and the plans for the floors have long been lost. The only space where a group can gather quickly is a soaring atrium with walls of different heights and a glass roof that awkwardly bridges the gap between what were once separate buildings. Duke Gareth of Naxen, unofficial head of the Council of Mages, and Harailt of Aili, head of the royal university, should such an institution actually emerge from a pile of building plans and benign royal neglect, are standing at the head of a small group of guardsmen. Myles of Olau is off to one side, looking at the frieze showing the Old Ones being consumed by fire from the Divine Realms as they try to overthrow the gods.

Duke Gareth looks sideways at her briefly. “How are Baird and the baby?” he asks quietly, while the guardsmen and Harailt consult on the plan if Thom doesn’t open the door.

Wilina comes to stand beside him and is pleased to find that she can keep her voice steady and low. “They’re doing better.” She crosses her arms across her chest and tucks her hands under her armpits to warm them—the room is brutally cold and there’s a frigid draft somewhere. “How are you faring?” She knows that Gareth has struggled in recent months—with his ever-growing responsibilities, with age and the strain of watching his favorite sister, the queen, come closer and closer to death.

“I look forward to putting this wretch in his place,” he replies through gritted teeth. Myles, wandering over to the circle, can only nod. She knows both men adore Sir Alanna in their particular ways—Myles had made her his heir, while Gareth had once suggested Squire Alan might be an appropriate successor to his place as King’s Champion—and that both men extended that friendship to Alanna’s brother for her sake, and were swiftly rebuffed.

It’s definitely an anti-climax when Harailt bangs on the door and Thom immediately opens it. He’s wearing a garish brocade robe thrown over a nightshirt and smells like sour sweat and orris hair oil.

“May we enter?” asks Harailt politely, which is why he’s at the front of the line and Wilina is standing at the back next to Myles. She’s not entirely sure she could have asked, instead of moving straight into the disemboweling.

Thom, showing more self-preservation than anyone assembled would have previously credited him with, simply steps back and extends a diffident arm. “Help yourselves,” he rasps.

The workroom is a mix of irrepressibly gaudy furniture with even worse clothing draped over it and extremely serious magical research materials and paraphernalia. Wilina walks straight to the bursting bookshelves, glancing up and down the spines and trying to take in as many details as possible so she can recreate his library later. Myles is similarly casting a deliberately casual eye over a worktable covered in retorts and phials along with packets of herbs and a mixture of crushed crystals in a heavy stone mortar.

“Lord Thom,” begins Gareth. “We’re here with inquiries as to the nature of the _experiments_ you performed in the palace last night.”

Thom isn’t even listening—he’s striding angrily over to stand between Wilina and the bookshelves to block her view of the tags on a lopsided pile of scrolls. “Why are you even here?” he sputters, glaring at her. “Didn’t you just have a baby? Why are you even poking around in my business—”

“Shut up, Thom,” Wilina finally gets to tells him, and it’s momentarily exactly as satisfying as she could have imagined. Harailt goes to the table to look at the papers there before a shimmering purple cloud comes up and covers the entire surface. She will never understand how Alanna put up with her brother for so long.

“Trebond,” Gareth tries again, with a dangerously patient tone.

“I don’t have to tell you ANYTHING,” shouts Thom, and the _walls shake_ , just from the force of his temper.

“The blowback was quite significant,” says Harailt evenly, while he taps the glowing layer blocking his view of the table with a finger illuminated with his own yellow Gift. “Most of the palace felt it, with certain mages being most severely impacted, and reports from the city—”

Thom huffs and rolls his eyes. “Fine. The details of the spell are immaterial, but I was using Bladwyn’s conjecture to anchor it, and presumably the bindings got—”

“I’m sorry, Bladwyn’s conjecture?” interrupts Harailt, pinching his nose and glaring.

“That takes two spell casters! Two!” shouts Wil, throwing up her hands. “You have to anchor it—”

“Not if you’re me!” yells Thom back.

(Four months later, Wilina will be standing between Harailt and Baird in the throne room when Thom presents a resurrected Roger of Conté to the horrified monarchs. “Well, now we know who the other anchor on that Bladwyn was,” she murmurs, very dry though her heart is pounding. “What an interesting addendum, that it still works when one of the anchors is dead,” and her voice squeaks a little on the last word. Baird is preternaturally calm beside her; he’s breathing in a meditation pattern. Harailt just has his face in his hands.)

“Forgive me, Lord Trebond,” says Wilina, as acidly as she can muster. “We mere mortals who are not ordinarily compared to Kerel the Sage or Denmarie the Earthshaker generally believe in following rules when conducting magical experiments in proximity to other _people_.”

For a moment, Thom just looks at her, incomprehension clear in his flashing violet eyes. (This is why she doesn’t think the Mithrans should control all higher magical education in Tortall. They expect everyone they train to take solemn vows and give up their earthly attachments and then they’re surprised when they _don’t_.) Then the dam breaks, and Thom’s shoulders slump faintly and the hauteur leaches away.

“Duke Gareth,” he begins. “Duchess Wilina. Sir Myles. Harailt”—he clearly doesn’t actually know what Harailt’s title should be. “This has been a regrettable series of events. I have been engaged in some experiments of a very esoteric nature, of interest to none but a Mithran master, but taking a great deal of power.”

He turns to look at them each in turn, and Wilina notices how incredibly bloodshot his eyes are, the twitch in the nerve at his temple and the sallow cast of the skin on his face underneath a shadow of gingery unshaven stubble.

“In my haste and distraction on the path to knowledge, I seem to have neglected to account for the effects of drawing on excess powers while refining and refracting the strength of my own, which clearly overran the wards I set intending to prevent such an outcome. I am most truly sorry for the injuries my actions have caused, although I am afraid that I cannot promise with _certainty_ that no such events will occur in the future.” He seems to deflate even further. “Please—I haven’t slept in five days. I’m not even entirely sure what day it is.”

“Late afternoon, November the first,” say Wilina and Harailt in accidental concert; Wilina shakes her head and gestures for Harailt to go on. Thom nods, taking it in. He looks more and more pitiful, a painfully young man wearing fancy dress who really just wants a nap—except he’s also a fully-credentialed Mithran master, and in his ten months at court, Wilina has watched Thom adapt himself to his new environment like a fish to water and she absolutely does not trust him for a second.

“Trebond,” says Gareth again, stern and cold. “The Tortallan Council of Mages, or at least the plurality assembled here, finds that you have willfully disregarded courtesy and safety in your conduct of magic.”

“Myles isn’t on the Council of Mages,” sputters Thom.

“Proxy vote,” says Myles back softly. “And I promised your sister I’d keep an eye out for you.”

“And I am sure this is _exactly_ what she hand in mind—”

“I wasn’t finished,” continued Gareth, implacable as a glacier. “You’re hereby prohibited from conducting further work for the period of one month, although you will be allowed to retain access to your books and your workroom, provided you do not attempt to use them.”

“I—Fine. Fine, I’ll follow your rules,” says Thom, raising one hand. “I swear by Mithros and the Goddess, I will not do any further work on those experiments for the period of one month, and I will alert the Council should I need to conduct further work in that vein once the period of prohibition is up.”

“Very good, my lord,” says Gareth, sounding as sarcastic as Wilina has ever heard him.

“Oh!” comes a high voice from the door, accompanied by a flutter of skirts. Delia of Eldorne is preening—there’s really no other word for it—in vivid green silk in the hallway, and nearly craning her neck as she attempts to see who else is inside the room.

“Lord Thom, you’re not dressed for dinner. The rest of our little gathering is quite keen to ply you about the results of your….experiments.” She takes a step in, glancing around under demurely lowered lids. “But I see you are both already occupied and perhaps indisposed.”

“I believe our business here is concluded anyway,” says Harailt, still sounding pleasant. King Roald should begin appointing him to diplomatic junkets if he can keep this cool in the face of significant aggravation. “Lord Thom, Lady Delia,” he adds with a bow, “we will take our leave.”

Wilina sticks with a simple inclination of her head, taking refuge in her much higher rank to cover that she can’t actually remember what kind of a skirt she’s wearing and what kind of curtsey she can perform in it. And then she follows Gareth and Harailt back out into the hall, with Myles bringing up the rear.

Their group has made it back to the newer and thankfully warmer parts of the palace when Wilina realizes what has been bothering her about Delia’s appearance. “Did you tell the guardsmen to hide if anyone came by?” she asks Myles next to her, who’d offered his arm after the second time Wilina stumbled on the stairs.

“No,” he says, slowly. “Then why didn’t they—”

“—stop Lady Delia?” she finishes for him.

Myles stares off into the distance for a moment. “I will see what my sources can do and whether a map of the passages in that portion of the palace can be found.”

Somehow, Wilina makes it back to the infirmary, and a hard cot in a quiet room that feels like the softest featherbed. She is asleep almost before her head hits the pillow and if she dreams, she doesn’t remember what she sees.

* * *

The weeks between All Hallows and Midwinter pass quickly, but there’s a rising underlying tension in the Tortallan court as the holiday approaches.

Thom abides by the council’s restrictions, at least as far as Harailt and Wilina can determine—he simply gets outrageously drunk at court events instead, egged on by some of the younger palace nobles in the circle around Delia and the Copper Isles princess, Josiane. “Well, if you can’t _do_ any magic, then what’s the bother?” Josiane exclaims over the noise of a party in late November, and four senior nobles turn and leave in disgust.

Prince Jonathan is not part of the squad of raucous revelers, but he’s very unsubtly conducting his own affairs with Josiane that bring him into closer and closer orbit. (Conservative and liberal factions are briefly if confusingly united in thinking longingly of the days when Alanna of Trebond was in the prince’s bed.) Queen Lianne ignores the gossip, as she almost always has when it comes to her son, and her own health continues to fade. The king is distant and preoccupied, watching his queen weaken while the days grow short. (Whatever the king’s faults, anyone with eyes can see he adores his wife.)

Substituting brandy for magic as his method of self-abuse of choice seems to have done little to improve Thom’s personality or health. By the beginning of December, Baird is forced to corner him at an evening reception and all but march him to the infirmary.

“That is a fulminating pneumonia,” he explains, again, as Thom hacks into his sleeve and then glares at him with red-rimmed eyes. Baird finds himself pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers as he again tries to reason with this recalcitrant sorcerer. (Hearing Thom identify himself with the deliberately abstruse title of sorcerer in mid-November had made _Wilina_ turn around abruptly and leave a room she had just entered, so she could have silent hysterics in an adjacent salon.)

“Why do you care?” seethes Thom, with a hoarse wheeze. Baird simply grips his elbow and begins to propel him towards the nearest doorway. “So, my experiments—knocked you out, your wife yelled at me, and now we’re friends?”

“My wife yells at lots of people,” _and I love her so much_ , “given sufficient provocation,” says Baird evenly. “No need to feel special.” Under the fabric of yet another stiffly embroidered velvet robe—where does Thom find these items?—he can feel the bones of the younger mage’s arm, covered by too little flesh.

“Look, Thom,” he continues as they turn into quieter halls. “I’m a healer. I would still take care of you if you had killed a man, because it is my duty. And I hope you haven’t been avoiding the infirmary out of care for _my_ feelings.”

“Killing a man is not my problem,” snorts Thom, quiet. “You want my sister for that kind of thing.”

* * *

The fourth night of Midwinter is traditionally for family parties. Baird stands to the side of the drawing room in the Corus house of the ha Minch clan and notices a new seriousness that hangs in the atmosphere. Three-year-old Cathal has been taken in hand by a governess and goes happily to play with assorted cousins, but Graeme, five years old and keenly observant of the moods of adults around him, opts instead to stay close to his father. He’s curled up in an armchair near the fire with a large picture book.

Wilina is wearing something with wonderfully full skirts and the candlelight catches the embroideries on her bodice and makes her chestnut hair and the Queenscove rubies in her ears glow. She’s standing, hands in pockets, with her aunt and their hostess for the evening, Countess Tómnat ha Minch, and her father. Lord Emry of Haryse is serious and stocky, with steel-grey hair and a sun-weathered face, and his brown velvet tunic has a line of milky drool down it from where baby Neal is completely asleep with his mouth open on his grandfather’s chest.

They’re speaking about Carthaki politics, Baird thinks—he learned at the imperial university how to lip-read at a distance, although Tómnat’s strong Northern accent makes her a little difficult to parse. (Wilina, who gestures expressively especially when she talks about Carthaki politics, is much easier, provided he doesn’t get distracted by her other aspects.) She’s saying something about the emperor going from seven heirs to two in the past decade. Tómnat replies with something about Siraj and then the—western?—imperial fleet and the Copper Isles. Then they’re speaking more quietly and turning heads to hide their mouths, although Wilina is rolling her eyes dramatically, which is a giveaway that they’re talking about Princess Josiane.

“Interesting party,” says a mild voice at his side. Myles of Olau has come up next to him, holding a glass of wine that by now Baird knows is social camouflage. (If Myles wants to get properly drunk, he drinks brandy instead.) “Unlike in many families,” he continues, while Baird looks at him, “the ha Minch have a real range in their political attitudes. It’s refreshing.”

Baird is tired—the fourth day of Midwinter is also traditionally when children receive gifts, and his woke him up early—and so it shows on his face that he’s trying to figure out how, if at all, Barony Olau is connected to clan ha Minch.

Myles chuckles and shakes his head. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I’m simply here as a guest of the house. With my adoptive daughter in the desert, I thought I’d accept some new invitations rather than remain in the palace for yet another night of revelry and poor decision-making.”

“Of course,” says Baird, simply. “And the fact that several people here, including my wife, collect information for your secret intelligence networks is immaterial.”

“Well, that,” says Myles, with a small smile. “And also the part where, were something to befall the Conté line, the Minchi are perhaps best placed to replace them on the throne. Or to put their significant resources in funds, connections, and intellect”— he glances again at the cluster of Emry, Tómnat, and Wilina, now holding Neal – “behind a legitimate candidate of their choosing.”

Every hair on Baird’s arms stands on end despite the warm room.

“I have no doubts that this house supports Roald and will support Jonathan, unless he proved himself truly unworthy of their regard,” Myles continues, turning slightly away from the room and back towards Baird. The gentle and cultured knight is not usually prone to dramatics, and right now, he’s simply serious. “But if Roger had achieved his plans a tad more successfully, or if Jonathan could not hold the throne, we would be in a very different position.”

Roger, fortunately, is dead. But—while Baird thinks Jonathan could someday be a good king, maybe a great one, he can imagine other futures, too. Like a too-young King Jonathan with a capricious Queen Josiane and a high court filled with Lady Delia and a permanently-inebriated great sorcerer Thom, while, apparently, in the background the realm fragments and a rebellion plots to place one of Baird’s _sons_ on the throne.

Myles is staring at him over the rim of his wine glass. Baird just raises an eyebrow and says, very dry, “I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen.”

“Midwinter greetings, Sir Myles,” says Wilina, deliberately archaic in ringing formal language as she walks over to them, Neal in her arms. Myles immediately melts and begins pulling silly faces at the baby. Neal is awake again and making unsuccessful grabs for his mother’s earrings with one pudgy hand. “No, darling, those are not for you and you won’t like how they taste,” she adds to Neal in an aside. 

“Duchess Wil,” says Myles affably, as if he hasn’t just been talking about civil war and making Baird calculate exactly where their sons would stand in the line of succession. “Have you heard any more stories from your friends at the imperial university? They really do seem to be expanding the curriculum in the most interesting way for that young man from Tyra.”

“I have a letter waiting for me from the School of Mages that arrived today,” says Wilina. “Come for tea some day this week—there are some interesting changes in the research faculty. Regardless, though, I’m envious. Most of the boy’s subjects sound like tremendous fun.” Baird snorts, pretty certain that no one, young Arram Draper included, has ever described medicine-making for a typhoid epidemic as “fun.”

“I hear he may also be connected to the abolitionists,” Wilina adds quietly. “His sympathies lie that way certainly. We could perhaps offer a more congenial home in future years.” 

“What a wonderful thing it would be, to have a university of our own and be able to attract such talent to Corus,” replies Myles, deliberately casual. “I must mention this to our hostess, who I notice is no longer engaged in conversation, and I haven’t even paid my respects yet.” He smiles warmly at them, gives Neal one more little wave, and then bows and continues on his way to Countess ha Minch.

“You look a bit peaked,” Wilina says to Baird in Old Thak, under the cover of passing Neal over so she can shake out her arms. Neal plants his face in his chest and promptly falls asleep again. Baird is suspicious; such an amiable baby seems practically guaranteed to be trying later in life.

“I think I would never sleep well again, if I had Myles’ job,” he says quietly in the same language.

“It’s his responsibility,” she says, simply. “And he’s very good at it. I admire his adaptability. And his foresight.”

“He’s been sharing some of that foresight with me just now,” murmurs Baird, staring at Graeme’s dark red hair where it’s just visible around the side of his chair. “He had some thoughts about royal succession.”

Wilina follows his gaze towards their son. “What a wonderfully normal and not at all concerning topic of conversation.” Graeme looks up to see them and Wilina gently waves—the deliberate and silly two-handed wave that is just for her and Graeme. Reassured, he ducks back into his book.

Myles isn’t wrong – ha Minch land holdings are vast and their abstruse and sex-blind inheritance laws make for a dense thicket of connections by family and influence. Baird and Wilina were a love-match; but Baird also knows his mother and Countess Tómnat spent an entire week on inheritance settlements and the implications of a Queenscove-Haryse-ha Minch alliance before their engagement could be formally announced. (In Tortall. In Carthak, where Cosmas Sunyat introduced them, as two Tortallans a few years apart in their university studies, the only surprise from their friends was that they hadn’t _already_ wed.)

Wilina glances across the room to where Miles stands amiably chatting with her aunt, only the slightest hint in his posture giving away the intensity hidden behind his shaggy exterior. “My love of a challenge notwithstanding,” she says, “I think we’ve had enough foresight for one night.”

* * *

Thom of Trebond is scrupulously moderate in both his magical antics and his public deportment for over a month after Midwinter. This does not last. After one court dinner near the beginning of February, Delia of Eldorne dares him to create a fireworks display after an evening of revelry, and only the thick layer of snow on the ground keeps the ornamental gardens from going up in a tremendous blaze.

“Surely he was drunk,” says Harailt when they hear about it. He’s joined Wilina and Baird for dinner at Queenscove house, tucked in an older neighborhood bordering the Temple District. They’ve retreated from the formal dining room to the cozier confines of the study-library.

“I wish I’d seen it,” says Wilina, pouring another cup of tea from the pot on the brazier in the corner before sitting down cross-legged on a pouf. “Or, actually, I don’t, because I would have had to take responsibility and _stop_ him, but the colors described by the onlookers were—bizarre.”

Baird sighs from his seat on the low sofa and scoops up another egg tart from the table. “Everyone watching was probably drunk too, Wil.”

“Sure,” replies Wilina. “But that is a pretty common student error, and what you usually see is always the color of the miscreant’s Gift. It’s actually really hard to get anything else—that second century Lazamon of Berat treatise has a pretty good explanation why, as a side note. So, we should have had a great, big bloom of violet over the palace gardens, and instead it was, I quote, ‘like a blood moon turned inside out and then exploded.’”

Harailt snorts. “Was this Goldenlake? That’s a quote from something.”

“My informant’s evocative literary allusion aside,” says Wilina, waving half an egg tart and forestalling further objections, “the explosion in question was definitely not purple.”

“Well, maybe there was something in the air—”

“Actually,” asked Baird suddenly, “has anyone seen Thom perform magic in public _since_ All Hallows?” He looks at Wilina and Harailt. “I haven’t.”

Wilina is shaking her head. “Nothing except for that table-covering spell in his chambers,” but Harailt is already cutting her off.

“No, that was passive—it activates whenever someone other than the spellcaster gets close to it.” He snorts. “That thing’s got to be hell on the cleaning staff, especially if he has it set on most of his surfaces.”

“So, no then,” says Wilina thoughtfully, considering it. “Thom does something big and loud and inadequately anchored on All Hallows, and the backlash—what, sticks to his own Gift? Like the whiplash from a multi-person working that doesn’t mesh right?”

Harailt bobs his head sideways, equivocating. “Yes, but you need more than one principal spell-caster for that kind of cock-up, which as we _all_ know…” “There was not,” finishes Wilina with him.

They can hear the temple bells ringing in the distance, cutting through the clear winter night, and Harailt stands to leave. “Will I see you tomorrow night at court—there’s a reception in the throne room, some presentations planned, something like that?”

“We will be there,” says Baird, trying to sound neutral rather than dismally resigned. He’s exhausted: the winter rains are causing flooding in southern Tortall, so he’s been continually reading reports and writing recommendations to landholders about preventing contact between flooded privies and their water sources. (The biggest challenge: convincing them to pay for improvements.) The queen can’t keep weight on and has a rasping cough that won’t go away, and now he’s worried about Thom of Trebond too, on top of it all.

(Even if, right now, that fills him with as much joy as having to explain, yet again, to presumably-literate knights that they _truly_ do not want to drink water contaminated with their own fecal matter.)

 _Just another ordinary evening at court_ , thinks Baird. _I’m sure it will be fine_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This covers the plot timeline from the end of Woman Who Rides Like a Man through all of Lioness Rampant, with additional characters and details lifted from Song of the Lioness, The Immortals, Protector of the Small, and Tempests and Slaughter. Details of the physical layout of Corus lovingly extrapolated from Terrier. Spiritual guidance taken from Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga. 
> 
> All representations of universities in this fic bear no resemblance whatsoever to any real-world institution in which the author has been employed. 
> 
> Endless thanks to the delightful seawitches for thoughtful beta-reading, all-caps live commentary over WhatsApp, and fun facts about land tenure and mediaeval Iceland. George and Wilina owe you a bottle of brennivín.


	2. Chapter 2

There’s a story Wilina remembers reading as a child, from a collection about the Roof of the World.

A Saren battle commander has promised his king, the _zhirit_ Kaufain, that he will bring the border of the kingdom from the Fortress Wei to the bottom of Lumuhu Pass, even though the gods of the mountains themselves have sworn that he will fail. But his pride will not let him concede or turn around, and so he decides to commit to creating the worst disaster he can imagine, because he sees nothing else that he can do.

To the astonishment of both gods and men, the Saren commander is victorious, and he plants the standard of his king at the foot of Lumuhu Pass. But the terrible cost of his battle has poisoned the land, slain the small gods, and from his army of hundreds, fewer than fifty men remain. When he returns to Rachia, the king himself defies the gods and proclaims the great victory in battle. “Vau East-Wind save me,” says the commander when he hears the words of the king. “For another such victory, and I shall return to Wei alone.”

There is no sound in the great throne room of the Tortallan court after Thom of Trebond crosses the floor accompanied by an undeniably familiar man, and presents the no-longer-dead Roger of Conté before the sovereigns.

Wilina thinks, a little giddily, of Bladwyn’s conjecture, backlash, and how much power you would have to borrow from your twin to break the barriers to the Realms of the Dead. Time and her thoughts are speeding up, to a whirling, pounding dance beat. There’s plain, undisguised horror on the face of the king, the queen; horror also on the faces of many of the courtiers, but mixed too with a certain measure of awe, directed mostly at Thom but perhaps at the erstwhile duke as well.

Roger looks—astonishing. Hale, hearty, glossy brown hair and healthy complexion, his clothing as gorgeously tailored as ever. _No_ , thinks Wilina, rigorously, _that one is easy._ Surely his rooms were simply closed up and his wardrobe put in storage at the direction of the Lord Chamberlain. Resurrecting a tunic and hose is less impressive than reanimating a man.

Lord Thom, on the other hand, looks like he’s the one who’s crawled out of the grave. His red hair at least seems clean today, but it’s brittle against his cheese-pale skin, and dark bruise-like circles have formed under both of his eyes. He looks mortally exhausted and momentarily his composure wavers as the court stares at him and his poisonous, terrifying victory. Which will he be, thinks Wilina, panic retreating as the moment hangs, suspended. Saren commander, or the _zhirit_ Kaufain?

“In conclusion,” says Thom, bloodshot eyes flicking slightly to look into the crowd, “Lady Delia, pay up.”

That’s what—finally—breaks the hold on the court. There’s an explosion of sound; in the gallery above the room, some of the musicians seem to have dropped stringed instruments, hitting discordant notes on the way down. The queen sags in her seat, clutching at the king’s hand, and Baird is halfway to the dais before Wilina realizes he’s even moved. Beside her, Harailt has his head in his hands; he’s partly blocked from Thom and Roger—Roger!—by the bulk of Raoul of Goldenlake, but she still swiftly elbows him in the side before the other mage—mages!—can notice him.

(She remembers one of her earliest private classes in Carthak, Master Yadeen going solemn and dark at the end of the lesson when she told him she was Tortallan. “There’s a mage you might encounter someday, who’s one of your dukes,” he’d said, meeting her eyes, very serious. “If you ever meet him, you must be as boring as possible. Not a threat, not competition, a non-entity. And never say yes if he asks to see you alone.”)

Roger is making a contained, self-effacingly elegant bow. “Your majesties, my dear cousin,” he begins, before Jonathan stands and cuts him off.

(The first time Wilina met Roger at court, she wrote to Yadeen—no longer master, now a friend—and began “You were right.” She wrote to Yadeen the day after Alanna’s Midwinter duel too; his letter in reply, said “Thank. The. Gods.”)

“Cousin,” says Jonathan, loud enough to cut through the rising cacophony. “Lord Thom.” He pauses while the court quiets. “This is…unexpected. And while I am sure there is a long and complicated explanation, that will be a tale suited to private discussion.” He extends an arm towards the doors out of the chamber. “If you would be so kind.”

There’s really no recovering the evening from there, and so no one tries. Wilina finds herself exchanging weary nods with Gareth the Elder as he and his son follow Jonathan from the room. The Council of Mages will meet within the next few days; she should get a start on figuring out the possibilities for what Thom has done and how none of them noticed.

“Accountability must be the byword of the modern state,” she thinks immediately, and then tries to contain her despair and guilt without showing it on her face. The quotation is from minor treatise on administration and statecraft by Mesaraz Avevin Tasikhe before he was crowned emperor of Carthak. _Carthak_ , _which will be thrilled to hear a Tortallan mage has apparently_ resurrected _a would-be_ regicide _. As will Tusaine, still eyeing the western bank of the Drell River—and why stop there? And the Tyran banks will decide Tortall is a bad investment_ —Wilina abruptly turns and briskly walks through the nearest doors to the snow-covered promenade that wraps beneath the grand windows of the throne room.

She stands under the stars, in the blistering cold, listening to the buzz of the palace behind her and looking for the faint lights of the city downhill and rising on the hills across the river, until a few minutes pass and the world returns to normal speed. (The pit in her stomach remains.)

When she walks back inside, the throne room is mostly empty, aside from a few clusters of hard-partying courtiers determined to wring every bit of enjoyment from any given evening, no matter how bizarre. A distracted-looking page invites her to follow him to the queen’s apartments to meet Baird and she walks after him in a meditative study.

 _So, Queenscove: how would_ you _raise the dead?_

* * *

It only takes three days before Wilina begins seeing caricatures of Thom and Roger scrawled on the walls in the city.

A week after the scene in the throne room, she stops to actually look at the one on the wall of the Cat and Sickle near the foot of the Queensbridge. It’s definitely depicting a sex act, but snow-melt ran through the paint before it fully dried, so the image is a little harder to interpret than some of the others. Messenger boys in the road helpfully offer to explain the drawing to her, and then run off laughing when she makes an obscene gesture in response.

Her thoughts are sober as she treks up the gradually rising road to Queenscove house. The mood in Corus has been getting steadily grimmer, and angrier—at the arrogant and impious Lord Thom, at the villainous former regicide Roger, and, gradually rising underneath it all, a certain stunned disbelief and fury that King Roald has not acted swiftly to _return_ his nephew to the Realms of the Dead, after the gods themselves used Squire Alan-that-was to enact judgment on the Conté duke.

Wilina isn’t entirely sure how Alanna of Trebond was already a folk hero in Corus before she was knighted, but the Trickster’s spirit runs through the whole of the Lower City and there’s something about brave, brash, prickly Alanna that is easy to love.

But Alanna has not been seen in Corus since her duel with Roger, and rumor has her outside Tortall and utterly out of reach. So, at present, no help will come from that quarter. Although, as far as recent events are concerned, Wilina thinks it’s a toss-up where Alanna will fall on the topic of disemboweling Thom, whenever she returns from her wanderings.

The Council of Mages has historically convened in meeting rooms in the palace, but on this matter, they’ve elected to meet elsewhere, with “elsewhere” here defined as Baird and Wilina’s library, a suitable distance from the palace. Coming finally to the house, Wilina goes around to the tradesmen’s gate to peel off her soaked boots in the mudroom before cutting through the kitchen in her stocking feet, to the teasing of the household staff and Cathal, who is standing on a footstool and cheerfully mashing bread dough under the eye of Marinie, the housekeeper and head cook. She liberates an apple and some cheese and bread with explicitly granted permission, because modelling good manners is important, and continues upstairs.

Baird has been at the palace every day, caring for the queen. Duke Gareth and Harailt, along with Prince Jonathan and the Lord Provost, have been taken up with some prolonged interrogations of both Roger and Thom, attempting to establish the truth of Thom’s claim that Roger had been restored to life healthy but Gift-less. Since Thom continues to be unhelpfully vague about exactly _how_ he brought Roger back from the dead, Wilina has been left to handle the inquiry into methods of resurrection on her own time.

What she has so far is evidence from a number of disrupted magical workings dating to All Hallows Eve, and a series of diagrams in her study which trace branching probabilities that would explain both observed effects and the indisputable outcome, namely: the resurrected Roger of Conté. The first was reasonably easy—Thom’s efforts had memorable and infuriating effects. The second collection is more speculative. At least one diagram begins with the proposition that Roger was definitely dead, Thom extracted him from the actual realms of the dead, and therefore Thom has invented both a new physics and a new religion. Wilina hopes that’s not the actual answer.

In deference to the king’s desire to keep the fuss over Roger as much under a lid as humanly possible, the Council of Mages has been reduced to Gareth, Harailt, and Wilina. Following an archaic interpretation of married noblewomen’s legal personhood (“Just this once,” growls Wilina), they have decided their number also includes Baird, and the three men arrive from the palace together and join Wilina in the library.

“Thom still won’t be more specific about what he was actually doing,” says Gareth as he settles into one of the chairs by the fire. “And short of a royal writ for a formal interrogation, I don’t except we ever will know, at the rate our inquiry is going.”

“I’m beginning to think our bold sorcerer might not have known what he was actually doing,” says Harailt as he sits down next to Wilina on the sofa. “At least some of his squirrely-ness reminds me of what happens when a student can’t figure out how it all went wrong, but doesn’t want to admit it either.”

“Trying to reconstruct Thom’s thought-process ate two entire days when I started on this,” says Wilina with some irritation, and Baird laughs in commiseration while he takes the other seat by Gareth. “That was the wrong way to come at it. I think the real answer comes down to the simplest initial premise: either Roger was dead, or he was not.”

“Well,” says Gareth, “usually I would assume that means that Roger was faking somehow, or that he had bought off a healer. But I assume that’s not what you meant—and my apologies to present company for the implications,” he adds with a courteous nod to Baird who just rolls his eyes with another laugh.

“Baird’s honor aside,” says Wilina, “It must be more complicated than that—complicated both magically, and in terms of requiring a mage with a lot of power. Because otherwise, why bother with Thom?” She can see the moment where Harailt begins to get it.

“So, Roger’s plan needed a mage—and not just any mage, but the youngest Mithran master in several centuries. And even _that_ master needed to borrow power from his twin, who probably has about as much raw power as Thom does, even if Alanna doesn’t have much magical training.” Harailt turns to Wilina. “That was one of the only new things Thom mentioned, that he borrowed excess power from Alanna on All Hallows. It was at least part of the reason he overran the protective barrier he set.”

“But Roger was dead only a few days after Thom arrived in Corus,” points out Baird. “When did he have time to—suborn, I suppose, Thom into advancing his plans?”

“I think,” says Wilina quietly, “that Roger may have been paying close attention to Thom’s antics in the City of the Gods for a couple of years—certainly long enough to know what his power was like. He certainly had ample opportunity to observe Alanna at court, even when she seems to have gone out of her way to avoid him. And then, looking at the court after his death, some people jump out who were previously intimate with Roger and, after his death, switched their _very_ warm attentions to Thom.” She grimaces. “That’s all speculation, but someone, or a group of someones, had to goad Thom into working the second half of whatever Roger used.”

“Why do you say the ‘second half’ of whatever Roger used?” asked Gareth. “It can’t just be something non-specific?”

Wilina sighs. “That’s a bit of a judgment call, but: first, I can’t find any standalone magical working that would do what Thom thought he did, which was raise the dead. But also, magic requires you to balance the input and the output—energy can’t be created or destroyed. The easiest way to get a precisely balanced match is to take one spell and split it in two halves. Otherwise, it’s like wearing shoes from two different pairs, except if mis-matching shoes could be world-endingly bad.”

She points at another stack of papers on the long desk at the far end of the room, beneath the large windows. “Incidentally, I took the opportunity to put together another set of comments on the importance of well-shielded space for magical education, because Tortall is astonishingly lucky to not have _more_ magical accidents every year.”

“So,” picks up Baird. “We assume one of Roger’s still-living acolytes, probably one whose name rhymes with Lobelia, drops hints to the exact spell Roger used, and Thom successfully hunts it down. Does he realize that Roger can’t actually be dead?”

Harailt snorts. “Maybe he thought Kerel the Sage and Denmarie the Earthshaker also actually resurrected the not-quite-dead? Or maybe he slept through all his Mithran theology classes.”

Wilina stands up to stretch briefly. “I think that either Thom found something that looked almost right for raising the dead and decided to experiment—maybe he even found something that was recrafted so that it didn’t look like the second half of the spells Roger already did. I’m assuming some string-pulling here anyway, so it’s not impossible. But I do think he did at least some of his own research, because he didn’t just enact the spells, he _modified_ them.”

She continues standing and ticks the points off on her hands. “He’s not stupid—ok, he’s not stupid in this particular instance in a chain of bad logic and ego-driven decision-making,” she amends in response to three sarcastic looks.

“Thom knows _Bladwyn’s Book_ , and he uses the conjecture to anchor and bind what he’s doing. He gets everything set, does his spell, overruns the barriers on the binding and produces a magical backlash that flattens most of the mages in his vicinity. But it _worked_ ,” she adds, leaning forward to brace her hands on the back of the sofa, “because that’s the last gigantic magical working Thom did. After that, no more big magic. That was when he brought Roger back.”

Gareth covers his eyes with his hand. “So much for our month of prohibitions. I haven’t so thoroughly closed the stable doors after the horses have bolted in _years_.”

“I think that did have an effect, actually,” says Wilina. “Thom didn’t present Roger for almost four months. I think he needed that time to fully—reanimate. There are more generalized magical infusions you could brew up to speed the process, but according to that Catfoot treatise on medicinal wormwood variants, the timing is really delicate--”

“Wait, _fuck_.” Harailt, who knows Catfoot’s work extremely well and can see where this is going, sits straight upright on the sofa. “Did he use the Sorcerer’s Sleep? It has to be the Sorcerer’s Sleep.”

There’s dead silence in the room, until it’s broken by the thump of running feet in the nursery at the other end of the house and what sounds like children practicing dramatic declaiming.

“That would be the best fit,” agrees Baird. “It’s ridiculously archaic—I don’t even know how you’d actually _do_ it, but the overall effects match. Although Roger is in better shape than I’d expect for a man who was stabbed right before he worked the spell—where do you think Thom was keeping him?”

“There’s an Eldorne estate only an hour’s ride north of here,” murmurs Gareth. “Perfect place. Unfortunately I’d need a writ from the king to even ask to search it, never mind to compel cooperation. Same with Thom’s rooms in the palace—they become an extension of the holder’s fief and noble privilege remains inviolate.”

“What I can do, though,” says Wilina, “is spend some time with the palace librarians to figure out what relevant material ought to have been available, even if it is for whatever reason no longer present on the shelves. Thom doesn’t have any city contacts, he’s not known in Carthak as far as I can tell—if he found something on his own, he encountered it in either the palace or the Mithran cloisters.”

There’s a knock at the door, and one of the footmen enters with the news that there is a royal courier downstairs with information he will only give into Duke Gareth’s hands. Gareth rises, looking preoccupied. “It’s probably the updates from the king’s privy council. I did tell them to wait until I got back, but apparently not.” He shakes his head and follows the footman, Pym, from the room. 

“The problem,” concludes Wilina as she goes to sit back down, “is that it’s all conjectural. I mean, I can probably tell you with a high degree of confidence what Thom’s spells actually did and their after-effects, enough to satisfy a magistrate’s court if the crown wished to prosecute for, I don’t know, recklessly stupid uses of magic within the walls of the city.”

“But all the rest of it, the underlying whys and hows, those we can’t prove,” finishes Harailt, looking glum.

Gareth comes back into the room, looking like death. Baird immediately gestures him back to the seat nearest the fire and moving to pour him a cup of tea. Gareth wraps his hands around the cup and takes a grateful sip, before setting it down on the table and clearing his throat. Wilina is reminded that he once commanded men into battle by the way he lifts his head, flattens his palms against his thighs, and banishes any glimmer of unease or doubt from his features.

“That was a messenger with news from the meeting of the king’s private council,” he says without preamble.

“King Roald has elected to restore Roger’s title and lands. He is, inalienably and effective immediately, once again of royal blood and the heir apparent after Prince Jonathan.” Gareth’s voice cracks a little. “I have previously expressed my disagreement with this course of action, apparently to no avail.”

“Has Roald lost his mind?” Wilina asks, without really caring that she’s speaking out loud. From the faces of everyone else, they had all been thinking the same thing. “None of the great houses would back his claim to the throne now; Roger has no support that I know of in the guilds, the banks, or the military, and the Lower City has been calling for his head on a pike for the last week. The realm would never accept him as king, even if he tore the kingdom apart trying.”

She stares at Gareth, still shocked and deathly pale. She can tell Baird is itching to hand him a blanket although he’s certain Gareth wouldn’t accept it. “Gareth,” she says clearly. “Why is Roald doing this?”

“Roald likes things orderly,” he answers, quietly. “He likes things and kingdoms and people in their proper, harmonious places, and he is doing whatever it takes to get back to that proper state as quickly as possible.” Gareth spreads his hands in an exhausted gesture. “And he knows my sister is dying; I imagine he hardly has time to think of anything else.”

“And,” asks Harailt with a slightly desperate gesture towards the accumulated stacks of paper, “further evidence suggesting that Roger already had a contingency plan for his own resurrection and had intended to cheat death when he issued his challenge—that wouldn’t change anything here either?”

Gareth just shakes his head.

“Gods damn, gods damn,” growled Harailt. “So now what do we do?” 

“We watch,” says Baird, quietly. “And we wait for the right opportunity.”

“To instigate a noble revolt against his Majesty’s second heir apparent?” says Gareth dryly.

“Those are absolutely not the words we are choosing to use,” Wilina replies, very deliberately, and she makes sure she meets his eyes until he looks away. Behind her, she can tell Baird has gone very still. “I refuse to solve problems that we don’t yet have.”

“But,” she adds, still deliberate, “I think what we all want is a just and stable kingdom where our children can grow old, living long and happy lives. And I think we both know that Roger is unlikely to see eye-to-eye with us, and our families, on how that outcome is to be achieved.”

Gareth sits still for a moment and considers. “I would put those notes away in a very safe place.” Wilina decides not to feel patronized and simply nods.

“Well, whatever all this comes to, I should think we ought to switch to cremating our dead like the Carthakis, just to avoid future unpleasantness,” adds Gareth, reaching for and almost achieving nonchalance as he begins to rise. “I think our business here is finished for the present.”

* * *

A few days into March, Baird comes home from the palace again, late. He walks into the study, where Wilina is reading on the sofa, and folds himself into the space next to her, so he can lean his head on her shoulder and press his face into the fabric of her wrap. “How’s Lianne?” she asks quietly while the fire crackles. There’s already a stick of cedar incense lit before the statue of the Black God in the family shrine in the corner.

Baird’s heavy silence is answer enough. She leans over to rest her cheek on the top of his head. “I am so sorry, my love. So, so sorry.”

He sighs briefly. “I’ve thrown so much magic at her over the years that it’s like it doesn’t stick anymore. And Roger’s wretched fountain—thing—made everything even worse.”

Wilina closes her eyes. “How bad?”

There’s an infinitesimal shake of the head underneath hers. “End of the week, if that. Jonathan, Roald, Gareth, they’re all sitting vigil with her.”

She shifts her legs so she can reach an arm around and pull him close with her on the sofa, and they sit, listening to the crackle of the fire and the faint sound of rain outside, melting away the last remaining winter snow.

There’s a knock at the door a few hours before dawn, and Baird returns to the palace at a hard gallop.

Wilina decides trying to sleep more is pointless and goes to jump in the cold plunge of the household baths, down below the kitchens on the lowest level. She’s back upstairs combing her drying hair out before the fire just as dawn breaks, when the palace and temple district bells begin to toll mourning for the queen.

* * *

Priestesses of the Goddess stand around the shrouded bier holding the body of the queen and raise their hands and sing, calling on the goddess of thresholds and cross-roads and magic and night. The catacombs of the Tortallan palace are wrapped in darkness, the windows covered, and only the flickering light of the mourners’ candles push back the shadows. There’s another variant of the traditional funerary rite for pious women, one rewritten with the precepts of the Gentle Mother in mind, that features more light, but this isn’t it.

Baird wouldn’t have been able to stand it if he’d had to put up with a paean to the Gentle Mother. Lianne was quiet and retiring, and she was also stern and brave. She should be remembered with all the rites and honors accorded to the old ruling queens, guided back to the goddess who made her in darkness and awe, to the final mystery of death. He wishes he could have done more.

_Do not reproach yourself, My son._

Baird freezes. He heard that voice as a child when a woman with black hair and red lips found him in the orchard in Queenscove and told him to study hard and listen to his mother, and to use the Gifts the gods had given him. He heard it once or twice at the university, in chaotic surgeries and dismal plague wards, and once in the palace when a boy with purple eyes and red hair plunged his hands into the fire and then led his prince back from the brink of death. Next to him, in the first row of mourners arranged in an arc around the tomb, Graeme and Wilina give no sign that they’ve heard anything.

_We did not give you Our gifts in order that you might hold back what rightly belongs to Death._

At the front, Prince Jonathan stands, sturdy and brave like his mother, between the king and Duke Gareth as four more priestesses lift the edges of the burial stretcher and bear Lianne’s body into the tomb.

 _Save your strength_ , says the Great Mother Goddess in Baird’s ear. _There are more challenges coming._

Then she’s gone, with a lingering whiff of pine boughs and snow before those too disappear with a swing of the censer as the priestesses return, free of their burden. The mourners blow out their candles and stand in the silence and the dark as the last lamentation is sung and the bells are rung one last time, before they begin the long, slow climb back to the surface and the main body of the palace.

There’s the traditional banquet offered in the queen’s memory to the poor of Corus, but no further events that the high nobility are required to attend. Graeme has been preternaturally well-behaved but is starting to drag his feet as they turn into one of the quieter corridors on the ground floor of the palace.

“Aha,” comes an unctuous voice behind them. “If it isn’t the duke and duchess of Queenscove. _And_ the heir. State funerals are an affair for the entire family.”

Baird has always admired how Wilina can execute an easy pivot in heavy court dress. She stands, appearing utterly relaxed, but keeping Graeme slightly behind her, mostly blocked from sight by the volume of her skirt. “Roger,” she says laconically. “I would offer my condolences on the loss of your royal aunt.”

Roger doesn’t blink. “I am fortunate to have returned to see her before her end of days. I am sure you did everything you could,” he adds in an aside to Baird. 

Baird is _exhausted_ , with magic and healing and deathbeds and every bit of pox-ridden power-hungry nonsense this man has cooked up in the last ten years. All he can do is stand and stare at Roger’s smug Conté features and ersatz mourning garb and be grateful for every bit of meditation and magical control he’s ever practiced, because otherwise the yawning feeling of cold fury in his belly would have had devastating consequences. And the worst part is that no matter how calm he stays, he _knows_ by the twist of Roger’s lips that the other man knows exactly what that calm costs him too.

“It is a terrible loss, for the kingdom and the court,” Baird manages to say. He knows Roger has always thought him a bit dull. (“Stuffy, virtuous, and annoyingly devoted to the flea-bitten and bedraggled” was the exact quote.) He doesn’t try to continue the conversation. Instead all three adults let the sour, awkward silence build while they all stare at each other, covertly measuring, and Graeme stands like a very small statue behind his parents.

Roger breaks first. “I suppose I ought to apologize—my reappearance has probably disrupted all _sorts_ of calculations among various interested parties.” He pauses, poisonously. “Or perhaps it’s bringing them back.” He looks Baird in the eye. “I’ve heard lines of succession are always more stable when there’s just one heir, rather than two—or three.”

“What an odd thing to say,” remarks Baird, very pleasantly. “Is that a threat?”

“A threat? Queenscove, you’re clearly overworked.” Roger laughs. “Merely a comment. Although, speaking of three heirs, I ought to congratulate you on adding yet _another_ son to the family. Nealan, isn’t it? How very traditional.” Then, with an ostentatious appearance of leaning forward to squint, he adds, “But of course, that _is_ the ha Minch-style mourning jewelry, is it not? I always forget, Wilina, how well-connected you also are.”

“Hand-me-downs for a motherless child,” says Wilina with a shrug, as if she’s not wearing thousand-year-old Minchi heirlooms in her ears and around her wrists and as if Roger is nothing more than another court bore. “I’m sure you know what that’s like. My aunts are the only reason I have any manners at all.”

“Of course,” says Roger with raised eyebrows as he spreads his hands in a gesture approximating acknowledgement. “Queenscove, Wilina,” a nod in the direction of Wilina’s skirts, “young Queenscove. I take my leave.” And with that he walks in an arc around them and strides away down the hall.

Baird and Wilina just stand still in the corridor for a moment, listening to the distant footsteps as the echoes die down. Then Graeme tugs on Baird’s hand.

“Why did he say that?”

“Why did he say what, little bear?” asks Baird.

“Everything,” says Graeme, who looks confused and a bit like he’s going to cry. Baird stops and kneels down, immediately pulling Graeme to him in a hug. Wilina wraps her arms around them and then crouches down to Graeme’s eye-level.

“Hey,” says Wilina. Green eyes meet green eyes. “We know things have been a little serious and scary lately. That’s because some people made some bad choices, and some of those choices helped to hurt a couple of other people. But that is a problem for grown-ups, and we’ve got it handled. And if you’re worried or scared you can always talk to us, or to Marinie, or to your grandfather, or Aunt Sorcha, or Uncle Glaisdan, okay?” 

He nods. “Okay, Mama.”

“Let’s go home,” says Baird. “Let’s go home and _read_ ,” says Wilina emphatically. “And _eat_ , I am starving.”

“I think we need cake,” declares Graeme. “I bet Marinie has made cake.”

“We do not need cake,” says Baird, as they pull on coats and walk out towards the city through one of the lesser palace gates, and then shakes his head as his wife and son turn to look at him with identical expressions of astonished betrayal. “Fine, don’t listen to the healer.”

They step into the afternoon sunlight and he reaches for the warmth and the light, against the chilling dark of Roger and chaos and death. To Wilina he says, “You don’t even like sweets!”

“Lies, lies spread by my enemies!” Wilina exclaims dramatically, while Graeme starts giggling. “Let’s go towards the cake.”

Later that night, Baird sits before the fire and remembers Myles’ words at Midwinter and the strange light in Roger’s eyes today. _Three Queenscove sons, and Roger knows who the great houses might support against him if he stole the throne_ , he thinks, horribly sure _. He definitely knows_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Details of Carthaki politics and university culture all lifted from Tempests and Slaughter. Details of the physical functioning of the Gift and other forms of spell-casting lovingly stolen from the early 20th century history of physics, because write what you know.


	3. Chapter 3

The March weather takes a turn for the vile, and Baird returns to his work at the palace. With the court officially in mourning, there are no banquets or presentations, and even the “quiet get-togethers” have taken on a muted aspect. Even though this means that Baird and Wilina are both home more often than not, Baird has had some additional words with the small number of Queenscove men-at-arms about extra vigilance.

In Corus, Wilina sees a handful of memorial portraits of the queen set in shop windows or pasted on walls, and some houses and shops in the upper city have draped their doors with mourning bunting. Those decorations end up in tatters and shreds in the road when another storm sweeps through and are not replaced.

The city mourns for Lianne in the respectful abstract, but they _fear_ for the crown, for what Roger’s unnatural return will mean for the realm and for them. King Roald has long been distant, even in his own capital city, and with his wife’s death, rumor in the eating houses and markets and temples is that he has completely given up his official duties, leaving the affairs of state in the untried hands of Prince Jonathan.

The heads of the silversmiths’, goldsmiths’, and gem merchants’ guilds have all noticed strange fluctuations in markets and sales throughout the realm, although nothing that quite resolves into a pattern. (They succeed, at least, in keeping the rumors quiet—no one wants a financial crisis on top of everything else.) The priestesses who run the temple hospitals in the Lower City are whispering about knife wounds and poisonings and some kind of leadership struggle in the Court of the Rogue, and in the past few months, several young apprentice mages have been sent instead to study with masters in Blue Harbor, Arenaver, and Port Caynn after their work and movements drew attention from certain criminal parties in Corus who were disinclined to take _no_ for an answer.

And on top of everything, lest anyone forget, there is a Conté duke running around because the Lord of Trebond decided to dabble in _raising the dead_.

“I mean, that does explain why most mornings I wake up with a headache _already_ ,” quips one of the senior mages from the gem merchant’s guild. “I’ve long wondered what ‘political unrest with a side of necromancy’ feels like, and it turns out, the answer is a _hangover_.”

The mages arrayed in chairs around the fire all laugh, Wilina among them. She’s been part of this group of practicing mages and journeymen who gather every month to read a new paper on magical workings or theory ever since she returned to Tortall from the university in Carthak.

There is not, strictly speaking, a mages’ guild in Corus, but they have a guildhall anyway, in a large old stone building in one of the districts on the north side of the Olorun, and a well-stocked, eclectic, and still-growing library. Most of the mages in the city work in material, applied magic, but they talk, and read, and argue about everything. In addition to their reading group, Wilina has been pulled into the committee that decides what books to purchase from Carthak and has been convening a theory seminar for a few years. By the standards of the palace, everything about the not-guild of the Corus mages is raucous and déclassé, which in her mind is an additional advantage—even when he was alive the first time, Roger was guaranteed never to make an appearance.

It’s not a university, but some days Wilina looks around the warm libraries spilling over with apprentices, the masters who wander into the atrium and get caught up in debates while waiting in the queue for the tea-seller, the mix of people from all over the city who come to public lectures in the assembly rooms, and thinks _it could be_. There’s a hunger growing in Corus, in all of Tortall, for more than what has been offered—the menial apprenticeships, the sparse temple schools, the diminished army and navy. Attendance at the not-university spiked after Alanna revealed her true identity at court—from both men and women, particularly from the Lower City.

The problem, of course, is whether that growth can continue. Civil war isn’t good for anyone, including scholars and craftspeople and mages. Wilina has no illusions that this building, this community, would not be _very_ much a target, were Roger to attempt to take the throne. (Thom, incidentally, has never tried to join, or even wandered into the building. Wilina is beginning to suspect he doesn’t actually know this part of Corus exists.)

While Wilina has been musing, the rest of the group has been discussing next month’s reading, which is apparently going to be a paper on the historical development of investigative magics, from scholars at one of the universities in Jindazhen. “Speaking of investigations,” says Noemi Blythdin as she turns towards Wilina, “how’s yours going?”

“Well…” begins Wil, buying time as she tries to remember which parts of her investigation actually count as a state secret. Although given that Roald chose to re-invest Roger as a Conté, she rather felt that particular ship had sailed, wrecked, and sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

“What’s the investigation?” asks another woman with long red hair and a Corus accent. Wilina doesn’t recognize her, although Noemi clearly does.

“Wil’s been looking into that magical backlash, last All Hallows Eve,” says Noemi as they all stand and begin to disperse. “She’s a theorist, Carthaki-trained, so she’s the one who gets first crack at all the weird magic no one else can explain.”

“All the weird magic no one else wants to _touch_ ,” says Wilina. “The investigation is coming along well enough. I thought I had it last week, and then I found a sign error and it turned out to all be garbage.” She extends a hand to the other woman. “Wilina of Queenscove. Are you also a theorist? Can I tempt you into joining the seminar of the weird?”

The other woman snorts a laugh. “Kuri Tailor, and no thank you.” She gestures at Noemi, and adds “We trained at the temple hospital at Mother of the Fields at the same time. I finally had a day when I could come over here and see what the fuss was about.” She looks thoughtful. “Did you say All Hallows, last year?”

Wilina shrugs, deliberately casual, although she pauses as she’s about to step onto the staircase. “There was a mage doing experiments, who borrowed power from someone else and overran the bindings he set up. The effects were far in excess of what should have happened, even with the extra power, so I’ve been tasked with figuring out how and why.”

That was, as far as she could remember, the sanctioned official version of her project. It was even true, if lacking some additional political details. “Did you experience anything strange around then?”

Kuri is looking at her very seriously, as if she’s trying to measure Wilina’s soul. “No, I didn’t. But someone I know did. I would have to ask my friend if she’s willing to speak with you. But if she was, where could I get you a message?”

Noemi says, “Actually, Wil’s coming to the temple next week to renew the barrier spells in the storeroom. If you leave a message there, I’ll make sure she gets it.”

“Right! The great de-ratting of Mother of the Fields!” says Wilina, a _little_ too enthusiastically to be strictly normal.

It’s an ongoing project, using variations on surviving fragments of some of the barrier spells that sealed the immortals into the divine realms. Wilina has been working out new modifications to the basic spells based on the antics of the rats, who succeed in getting through the barrier in some places every year, and then publishes the results as a theoretical investigation in a Carthaki university journal. Ilom Chioké apparently chokes on his tea every single time Cosmas and Yadeen remind him that every recent incremental advancement in the theory of magical barriers comes from a Tortallan study of rats in a temple granary.

“Only you, Queenscove,” laughs one of the two stone mages passing on their way to the stairs.

“You could design spells to randomly test any system you cared to design, and they would _never_ be as chaotic or tenacious as those rats,” sighs Wilina. “They’re bred to be contrary and I respect them as worthy adversaries.” Now Noemi’s laughing too.

Kuri gives her a crooked smile. “I think my friend might like you,” she says. “I’ll be in touch.”

It’s a good note to end the day on, although it doesn’t dispel the prickling unease. Walking back across the Kingsbridge in the slanting rain towards home, Wilina can’t shake the feeling that she’s being watched. It’s late afternoon, almost twilight, and the weather is pushing everyone to duck into cloaks and hoods and shelter under overhangs, and she certainly can’t see far enough in the deepening murk to recognize a particular face or threat.

But still, she’s certain someone is there. For a few months at the university, during a time of rising Carthaki-Tortallan tensions, Wilina and other Tortallan students were followed by imperial officers whenever they left the university—ostensibly in case they were observing military affairs and communicating them to well-connected family back home, but mostly to make a point. The only real incident to emerge was when one Tortallan student in the School of Law ended up in the university infirmary when he got distracted trying to catch sight of his watchers and instead was knocked down in the road by a refuse cart, so the whole affair ended up being more farce than tragedy, _but_ —even ten years later, Wilina remembers what it’s like to be surveilled.

The feeling persists all the way up the Palace Way as far as Gold Street, but every time she tries to catch a glimpse behind her, there’s nothing to see.

* * *

By the next week, Wilina has done enough of her own research that she’s pretty sure Kuri’s caution about introducing her to her friend is because the friend is, if not a member of the Court of the Rogue herself, closely related to someone who is. In any event, Eleni Cooper is well-known and well-loved in certain circles of the Lower City. Wilina is looking forward to meeting her.

It is, for the first time since the queen’s funeral three weeks ago, finally neither rainy, windy, nor unseasonably cold. Still, the planting season across central Tortall is in danger; Wilina and Baird have been sending messages back and forth with the steward and Baird’s sister Sorcha about how to position Queenscove against a likely bad harvest.

Also, the unseen watchers have continued to make their presence felt, although Wilina still has yet to catch sight of anything more than a brown cap and a yellow scarf. Two of Baird’s trainees have quietly come to tell him they’ve noticed mysterious figures in the infirmary trying the doorknobs on the storerooms and his offices at strange hours. Roger has not taken any more opportunities to be either creepy or oblique—in fact, he hasn’t engaged either Baird or Wilina in conversation at all, which should be more reassuring than it feels. The Lord Provost continues to question Thom and Roger, separately and together, about Roger’s past schemes and present lack of Gift, although without the authority of the king, it’s difficult to see what further sanctions might be imposed.

Still, despite everything, she feels momentarily optimistic.

“I believe our wedding vows included a provision that you would endeavor not to be bitten by rats in the pursuit of knowledge,” says Baird, as he passes behind her seat at the breakfast table.

“Once! That happened once!” protests Wilina, and she catches his arm to pull him back for an actual kiss.

Across the table in the breakfast room, Graeme laughs and then squirms sideways out of his chair as Cathal starts reaching for him while yelling “Arm, narm, narm, I’m a RAT.”

“Mama, make him stop,” begs Graeme.

“Cathal,” she says, “Look—rat, bat, or boy, you have to finish breakfast before you can get down from the table. And please don’t bite your brother or he’s allowed to bite you back.” (Graeme shapes his hands like claws and growls while Cathal shrieks in giggles.)

After she gets goodbye kisses from the boys (and wipes off the stewed fruit Neal smeared on her face), Wilina heads off to Mother of the Fields, in the Lower City on the edge of the common. The priestesses, as usual, hand her the storeroom records and a set of spare keys and offer the assistance of an acolyte if she wants it. (She also gets a dustpan and a basket, for any murine remains she might encounter while crawling around the storerooms adjusting parts of the spells.)

Several hours later, Wilina is back on the common—spells renewed, measurements and observations taken—and lying on her stomach in the grass to peer into a long, shallow ditch. It’s full of what looks like clumps of small animal bones and fur and other regurgitated animal material that breaks apart in clumps as she pokes them with a stick. This _is_ where one of her new experiments—a very small stable gateway built into one portion of the granary barrier—was supposed to spit the rats back out, _unharmed,_ and Wilina is just a little concerned that something is not working as planned.

There’s a flutter of heavy wings overhead, and Wilina looks up just in time to see a barn owl swoop towards the ditch, claws extended in a hunting gesture. A rat abruptly pops into existence through the spell gate—and is immediately scooped up by the owl. Wilina hoots with laughter, scaring the owl into a quick wheel before it flies off with an offended expression, back towards the rooflines of houses in the city where it presumably has a nest. “O great mother of darkness/ With three forms and three faces/ Propitiated with owl pellets,” she recites to herself. Then, still laughing, she decides to push herself upright and make it a proper prayer.

“Mother of Darkness, accept these offerings from this, your accidental and unworthy servant,” she says, standing to raise her face to the spring sky and then trying to brush clumps of grass and dirt off her over-robe. Theoretical work is usually a lot easier on her knees and her clothes.

“So mote it be,” comes an unexpected voice from behind her, and Wilina has to control her involuntary startle-jump so she doesn’t fall into the ditch.

The woman behind her is dressed like a prosperous city woman in green wool skirts and a yellow and orange embroidered shawl. She’s tall, with warm hazel eyes, grey-streaked chestnut hair, and a comfortably commanding air. “I was on my way to the temple when someone mentioned there was a woman mage lying in grass and poking at owl vomit, so I thought I’d see about meeting you out here,” she continues, eyes twinkling. “Eleni Cooper. You _must_ be Wilina of Queenscove.”

“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mistress Cooper.” Wilina offers an elegant, Carthaki-style bow instead of her hand, since hers weren’t particularly clean even before she started grubbing in the fields. “My apologies for—all this,” she adds, with a wave at her clothing. “If you’ll just give me a moment to peel the robe off and clean my hands, I’m at your disposal.”

“My house is only over on the Street of Willows,” says Eleni. “Come wash up in my kitchen and we’ll have some tea and chat.”

The house in the Street of Willows is set behind a sturdy wall, with a gate marked with the sign of a healer-midwife. Inside, the house smells like fresh thatch, clean wood, and healing herbs. Wilina gratefully scrubs her hands and arms after rolling up her robe inside-out and stuffing it into her mage kit.

“So,” says Eleni, and she sets down her cup. “I hear you’re investigating Thom of Trebond. And that there’s some continuing mystery about the exact nature of his antics last year at All Hallows.”

Wilina pauses, mid-sip, and sets her cup back down. “I haven’t been making his identity generally known,” she says, neutrally. The tea is _very_ good—herbal, not too sweet. “Did you know it was him at the time, or did you learn that more recently?”

Eleni snorts quietly and resettles her skirts in her chair. They’re sitting across the scrubbed kitchen table in her sunny kitchen, with bunches of drying herbs hanging from the rafters. There’s a gentle fire in the hearth, a copper kettle swung out of the way on an iron arm, and old-style blue stone tiles on the surround. The only thing missing from this picture of independent domestic tranquility is an opinionated cat, and Wilina feels like one might be lurking somewhere else in the house.

“At the time, no,” says Eleni, “although a knowledgeable party informed me soon after the fact.” She has a fond look in her eyes. “I’ve known Lady Alanna for a good number of years, and she’s close with my son. They were both in Port Caynn when Thom was conducting his experiments and borrowed his sister’s Gift.”

Wilina nods with a very straight face while she considers what “close” probably means in this context. Honestly, not marrying into the Conté line feels like a sensible move for anyone right now. _Good for Alanna_.

“As Kuri may have told you,” Wilina begins, “I’ve been speaking with anyone I can find who was conducting a working or experienced physical symptoms from Thom’s work. At this point, I think there was some element of the spell that Thom wasn’t in control of or wasn’t anticipating, which produced the blowback at such volume.”

She pauses, takes another sip. “I also think this impinges upon the other major question in the air, which is whether Roger’s Gift came back from the grave with him.”

“The man can certainly cause harm enough without his powers,” says Eleni mildly. “Many men can.”

“I do worry about that,” Wilina says, quietly. “That they’ll stop paying attention or thinking about him and what he can do, the moment I confirm that his Gift didn’t come back.” She stares at the grain of the table, bright under a good layer of wood polish. “He’s made oblique threats. Towards our family. I think he’d tear the country apart if it would get him what he wants, Gift or no Gift.”

There’s a warm dry hand on hers, sending a gentle pulse of calming energy before Wilina even realizes time has been incongruously accelerating again. She’s pretty sure she hasn’t slept through an entire night since they ran into Roger after the funeral and it’s starting to show, just a little, and Eleni is _entirely_ too good at listening.

Eleni squeezes her hand once more and then lets it go so she can fill Wilina’s teacup again. “Well,” Eleni says, “I don’t know very much about the Conté duke, although my son and Alanna have been paying close attention to him for years, and I understand that they are not alone in that exercise. Therefore, neither are you.”

Wilina finds herself nodding slowly in acknowledgement and drinks her tea.

“What happened the night of All Hallows?” she asks Eleni.

Eleni sighs, briefly looking a bit chagrinned. “I sensed some big magic brewing for most of the day, and so after nightfall I thought to attempt to probe the source of the disturbance. The guards set on it were _very_ strong. Then, a red flash, and hours later I woke on the floor and could barely pull myself out of bed for weeks.”

She raises her gaze to meet Wilina’s and shrugs, with a small smile. “It was perhaps a bit ill-mannered of me to pry. Although I don’t regret the choice, I _was_ truly surprised by the force of the response.”

“You’re sure about the color?”

From the look on Eleni’s face, that wasn’t exactly the question she had been expecting. She thinks for a minute, then nods. “Yes. Maybe even more brownish-red, like dried blood. And the color was from the magic, not from some physical effects.”

“I take it that’s important,” Eleni adds wryly, as Wilina abruptly digs out a sheaf of notepaper and starts checking calculations she’s written up and down in columns on each side of the sheets. (Good old Lazamon of Berat and his work on colors and Gift-mixing, coming through for her again.) If _that_ , then this, this, and not that, and…she sets her pencil down.

“Eleni,” Wilina begins, “I am so sorry that happened to you, and that the Tortallan Council of Mages did not step in sooner. Please accept my apologies, on behalf of the Council.”

Eleni bows her head graciously. “Your apology is accepted. Now what did you figure out?”

“Okay,” says Wilina, leaning forward and bracing her elbows on the table. Then she pauses to move her tea cup farther down the table so she can gesticulate without endangering the pottery. “My theory about the backlash was that Thom got far more out of the spell than he thought he put in, and far more than he budgeted for when he wrote the boundary conditions.” 

She leans back in her chair. Eleni is watching her thoughtfully with pursed lips. “Thom thought he was drawing Roger’s Gift and lifeforce back out through the conjecture he’d set up, and planned that into the modifications he made to the basic structure,” continued Wilina. “But that just doesn’t _work_ – you have to put in equal power to what you pull out.”

“I think,” Wilina concludes, “Thom routed his own power through the gate without knowing it and got it back _plus_ some or maybe all of Roger’s Gift. And maybe he threw some of his own lifeforce into that mix too. And that’s why we haven’t seen Thom do any big magic since last All Hallows, even after his month of probation was up—he got some of Roger’s Gift stuck to his by mistake and corrupted it.

Eleni sits back in her chair, looking contemplative. “I had heard that Duke Roger looked surprisingly hale and hearty for a man recently in the grave,” she offers. “If he had some of Thom’s life force to draw on, that would significantly help. He used the Sorcerer’s Sleep then?” she asks, as an afterthought.

Wilina nods in response, and Eleni looks a little smug.

“I told them the omens were bad, but not _that_ bad,” she says with a slight sniff. “Reading auguries is an imperfect art, but one that I think is still well-practiced enough that we should be able to follow a change of _that_ magnitude, if Thom had truly pulled the Conté duke out of the Realms of the Dead.”

Wilina laughs and drops her head into her hands briefly. “I had a path diagram for that possibility too,” she confesses. “It was only three items long, and the third step was ‘Find the gods.’”

“The poor man,” says Eleni. She shakes her head in response to Wilina’s questioning look. “Yes, despite it all. You don’t need to know much to feel sorry for him.”

“I’ve known people like Thom before, at the imperial university,” replies Wilina. “He thinks because he’s special he’s allowed to be horrible to other people—that he _needs_ to be horrible to other people, lest he stop being special. Mostly I think it’s a waste. What a stupid use of one’s gifts, to burn them up in endless insecurity and one-upmanship.”

Eleni’s hazel eyes are patient, with a gentle rebuke. “You’ve clearly had people who’ve loved you your entire life, virtues, faults, powers all. I think it’s rather easier to treat the world dismissively when almost all you’ve known are indifference and rivals.”

The afternoon sun is warm and golden through the small windowpanes. In the garden, there’s a chorus of robins over the rustling of a spring breeze through the leaves of the herb garden and the vines wrapping the sturdy walls.

Eleni hesitates, then says, “You’re a mage, quite obviously. You haven’t told me what you experienced, on All Hallows.” 

“Baird was … unconscious, for nearly an entire day,” Wilina begins, then stops to focus her thoughts. “Neal didn’t stop screaming for hours, couldn’t even stop long enough to feed, spiking a fever. I…bled, rather a lot, when he was born—it had only been eight weeks. I’d only just begun to have enough Gift back to feel it again, never mind use it.”

She’d been pushing it to even deal with Mages’ Council business, although it had felt necessary, important, to step back into character as hyper-capable, intelligent, Gifted, powerful, instead of being…a person with a body. (Wilina is _intensely_ glad she’s not having this conversation with Gareth or Harailt or Myles present. Her midwife knows, obviously, and makes Wilina talk about it, privately and regularly, which is…helpful. Baird, obviously, knows too, since he was _there_. He’s found his own person to talk to, although Wilina privately thinks it’s possible he’s been speaking straight to the Great Mother Goddess too.)

“You’ve had quite the year,” notes Eleni. No pity, only a deep measure of empathy.

Wilina snorts. “And that’s _before_ we include the undead would-be regicide.”

“The undead would-be regicide, who amuses himself making threats against your children,” adds Eleni. “You’re very contained, my dear,” she says when Wilina looks at her. “I thought it would help a little to spell it out.”

“You must have been a priestess once,” Wilina says in reply. It _does_ help. (Goddess, but she hates feelings.)

At that, Eleni laughs out loud. “And didn’t I get into scrapes,” she says. “There was the time I stumbled into the dust spinner near King Gareth’s Fountain, and was almost carried over to the roof…” She keeps talking, telling Wilina about growing up in the Lower City, her days in the Temple District, the life she built for herself and her son. (Eleni’s son is definitely the king of thieves. George Cooper sounds delightful. Alanna has good taste.)

The sun is slanting low over the neighboring houses when Wilina stands to go. Eleni embraces her at the gate, with a promise to speak again soon. The warmth of the afternoon carries Wilina along through the winding close, through cross-streets to another main road. Maybe there are watchers today; maybe not. She doesn’t notice. The palace and temple bells are chiming the hour as she turns on to the Palace Way.

A street away from home, the bells start to chime again, and Wilina finds herself coming to a halt, along with all the other people in the street. Gates are opening, and doors, and even windows as people lean out to hear better, and the whispers grow into murmurs that grow into shouts, because the bells are playing a royal mourning carillon, _again_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wilina is misquoting the 3rd century Greek rhetorician Athenaeus of Naucratis, who quotes a fragment of poetry associated with the goddess Hecate: "O mistress Hecate, Trioditis / With three forms and three faces / Propitiated with mullets." Your call on whether "mullets" or "owl pellets" scans better. (Mullets as in the Mediterranean fish, not the hair style.)


	4. Chapter 4

Now the fear hangs thick about the streets of Corus, like pus forming in a poisoned wound. A few weeks after Roald’s funeral, Wilina steps out of the way to let a cart pass and pauses in earshot of some washerwomen working at the edge of King Gareth’s fountain, and hears that the king’s death is judgment from the Black God against the Lord of Trebond for bringing Roger back. Why Roald and not, for instance, Roger or Thom was the appropriate target of the god’s wrath is left undiscussed in the time it takes for the road to clear. 

(“It’s truly remarkable to me, the number and variety of items you ‘happen to overhear,’” Myles observed once. “If you ever start that actual ‘shadow service’ you keep talking about, please know you _will_ need more women agents,” she told him in return.)

Cart traffic across the Queensbridge is only going one way in the opposite direction when Wilina gets to the crossing, so she finds a place to sit on the river steps in the spring sunlight near a group of river ferry pilots, talking in an undertone about the new “docking tax” being levied by a fellow called Claw. None of the boatmen are sure whether this is an official policy of the Corus Rogue or if this is merely the action of a bold opportunist trying to line his own pockets.

One of the younger men—Corus Lower City-born by accent, apprentice ferryman by mannerism—says that Claw’s men tried to kill the Rogue again only two days before, in an ambush at the (infamous?) Inn of the Dancing Dove, but weren’t successful. (The feeling in the group is that this survival is a very good thing, but they seem cautious enough of the previously mentioned Claw to keep their feelings relatively contained.) Wilina keeps her face carefully blank when she rises to climb back to the roadway towards the now-open bridge, and makes a mental note to check in on Eleni.

At the not-university, Wilina sits as an examiner in two sets of oral examinations for apprentices seeking to progress to journeyman status, and then joins Harailt and Trevor Ambereyes, chief mage of the glassmaker’s guild, in inching out onto the building’s roof to see where the tiles have come loose over the course of the winter and estimate how much it will cost to repair them. Erini Archer wants to talk about her anatomy seminar being moved _out_ of the room with the roof leak, to which Wilina agrees in principle but sends Rini to talk it out with Norwinn Ingensra, who is a truth-seer with the Provost’s Guard and keeps the records of what rooms in the building are being used for what. His experience in negotiation and de-escalation of fraught situations has proven to be a boon in this particular role. (Rini, Norwinn, and Trevor are all near the top of Wilina’s personal list for who else should be recruited to the Council of Mages, if the king-to-be should happen to ask.) 

Six different healers and healer-midwives find her as she tries to work in the library, with requests for medical books recently published in Carthak; five of them have already written out their purchase suggestions on the new forms Harailt has begun to leave out for the purpose. There’s fear here too, and uncertainty, but it tends to dissipate and evaporate in the sunshine that streams through the atrium skylights, the single-minded persistence of the healers, the exuberance and cheers from the friends and supporters of the newly-minted journeymen. Also, time passes a little differently. When you are concerned, as Ilan Micatongue is, with the action of glaciers in the Scanran far north that have formed over six millennia, human lifespans or even the rise and fall of kingdoms begin to seem ephemeral by comparison.

Wilina thinks that the political conditions of both Scanra and Tortall are probably relevant pre-conditions for being able to _do_ the work on six-thousand-year-old glaciers, but the traffic jam on the east stair eases and Ilan dashes off before she can say it. Also, some of the apprentice mages have taken up juggling in the lunch hour and someone is going to have to re-direct them out-of-doors, at least until their cross-handling materially improves. (That someone is her.)

She drops the forms on the desk Harailt’s started to use in one of the second floor workrooms and says “Congratulations on your not-university,” and then leaves, intending to work instead in her study at home, where the only people who can bother her are under the age of six and can still be effectively distracted with colored pencils and the promise of snacks.

Actually, that’s also true of adult mages. Thank all the gods for the atrium tea-seller.

Coming back to the south side of the Olorun, Wilina has to press her way through the afternoon crowds in the Daymarket, which are surprisingly dense for an otherwise standard market day, although the weather _has_ been gloomy for most of the previous week. She realizes the reason only once she’s gone another block and the crowd has thickened enough that there’s no easy way for her to get back out.

Over the heads of the crowd, she can see mounted guards in the armor and colors of the King’s Own, followed by a riding party of nobles in mourning colors. Prince Jonathan is near the front, with Gareth the Younger moving back to trade spots with the Lord Provost. That at least brings some cheers from the crowd—and it sends a chill up Wilina’s back to realize how eerily silent the crowd had been _before_ that.

When Wilina was a child, her father commanded the Tortallan southern army, and their home was in Feyzi, on the inner rim of the mountains of the Great Southern Wall, in what had once been the independent kingdom of Barzun. Lieutenant Okhan was her favorite of her father’s aides-de-camp, because his approach to handling protection for the general’s children was that they were probably safe but that it never hurt to know how to climb up a wall, cross a roof, and assess risk in any situation.

Wilina was born thirty years after the collapse of the last Barzunni dynasty precipitated a race between Tortall and Carthak to see who could claim the territory and its trade. In her lifetime the region has become healthier, richer, more peaceful—but still complicated. She’s only been back to Feyzi once since she left for the university, but the instincts haven’t gone away. 

_Oh, this is not good,_ thinks Wilina, and that’s _before_ Jonathan is swinging off his horse to pick up—something? Oh, a child—and then dismounting and walking into the crowd. _Right course of action, but a poor tactical position_ she thinks, and that’s apparently when the knives come out.

The crowd lurches as one, and then all semblance of order is lost and the packed mass fragments into hundreds of panicking people scrambling in every possible direction. Wilina finds herself trying hard to remain on her feet as the crowd around her pushes into the Street of the Griffins. She braces an older woman who’s about to slip, and scoops up the woman’s granddaughter with her other hand, and then everything is chaos and noise.

There’s a small temple halfway down with its gates half thrown open, and a terrified teenage acolyte with a staff is guarding the opening. She guides her new companions over and then goes back to pulling people out of the crowd and directing them towards relative sanctuary. The crowd’s beginning to thin, but there’s still a roar coming from the west on the main road; Wilina nods at the acolyte, who is moving to bar the gate behind her, and sets off up the road, heading south and east, which is not quite the right way to get to Queenscove house, but at least she’s moving uphill.

(The men-at-arms will have barred the gates when they heard the bells begin to ring; the boys are with their nanny and their tutor and the rest of the household, behind some very thick walls. Absolutely no panicking will happen on that account. They are fine.)

Once she’s above the boundaries of the Temple district, she turns back to cross the Palace Way and sees a full company of the King’s Own coming down to meet what looks like a portion of the royal party making their way back up on foot. (Jonathan she can at least identify from a distance by his hair—he appears to be moving under his own power although he’s cradling one arm against his chest.) Then she’s face-to-face with a brown-haired man with friendly hazel eyes that are exactly like Eleni’s and what seems to be a copiously bleeding shoulder wound. He wobbles, she tries to catch him, and then she’s landing hard on her knees as they both fall over.

“Need a hand?” she offers as she tries to rise. He’s obviously trying to catch his breath and beginning to look a little pale from blood loss. “And—superficial cut, or is that a stab wound?”

If he says he’s fine, she’s going to frog-march him to a healer, male pride be damned. (She conveniently ignores the fact that her knees are definitely bleeding from the fall and one hand is scraped raw.)

He’s more sensible than that. “Re-opened a cut, from a few days ago. Do you know Olau house?” he asks, still bent over and hunching a little to protect the injury. She eases his uninjured arm over her shoulder and begins to raise him to stand.

“I do, and Myles as well. Are you a friend of his? Or family?” she asks, mostly trying to keep him talking as they take cautious steps in tandem. Fortunately it’s not far to go.

The man leaning on her snorts a laugh. “I didn’t mean to, but now I think he’s courting my mother…” He trails off, shaking his head. “George Cooper. And to whom do I owe my rescue, fair lady?”

“Cooper—oh, are you Eleni’s son?” she asks, as they lurch into view of Myles’ front gate (sensibly barred and under guard). George Cooper tries to wave at them with the hand around her shoulder and staggers as he unbalances.

“Got it in one,” he says, and then looks at her sideways again. “Oh, are you Wilina? The one with the owls?”

“What? Oh gods, ha! Yes.” She looks sidelong at him, trying to figure out if he’s about to vomit or pass out on her. “My accidental offerings to the Mother of Darkness. I’ve got to get more deliberate about my worship I think.”

“You confused the hell out of some of the ladies of my court,” George tells her conversationally as they cross the threshold. “All the women of the night, you know, they give worship to the Dark Mother. Couldn’t figure out why all these symbols of Her power were flying low over the Common at all hours and swooping up these very fat rats.” Eleni and Myles are coming out of the main door of the house now, concern written all over their faces, although Eleni’s expression is melting into fond exasperation once she sees George is mostly upright and fully cogent.

“If you have suggestions about how I could make amends, I would be glad to hear them,” she tells him frankly as she hands him off to Myles and one of the sturdy guardsmen. “No, that’s a scrape only, the blood’s all his, I ought to get home to check on the boys.”

Myles will only send her back out the gates on horseback and in the company of two of his guardsmen, and with a promise to return in a few days when George is recovered. Wilina waves goodbye and then focuses on not clutching the reins or communicating her shakes to her horse as they make the short journey across to her home. There’s a small group of healers, all Baird’s trainees, riding down from the palace at a quick trot with their workbags, although Wilina doesn’t see Baird among their number—he’s probably still back at the palace, especially if Jonathan was injured.

Dismounting properly instead of sliding to the ground in a graceless heap takes…more concentration than she expected, although at least she can offer the guardsmen a proper deep bow in thanks before she walks through her own door.

“Mother of horses, what happened?” says Marinie when she sees Wilina, immediately signaling for someone to bring wash water up as she herds Wil towards the back stair that will let them get upstairs without encountering the boys. The shakes are well and truly setting in, and climbing the stairs is making her knees throb—did she fall another time before she tried to catch George too? Maybe? Maybe twice?

“It’s not my blood,” she tells Marinie (almost) evenly as she helps her into the bedroom and pushes her towards a chair. The scrape on her hand has opened up and looks filthy and oozing, and there are dark stains from where the wounds on her knees have bled through the light spring fabric of her skirt. “Okay, it’s _mostly_ not my blood.”

“I’m sending a message to his grace,” says Marinie as she helps Wilina take off her boots and stockings and then goes back to open the door for a footman bearing hot water.

“Only if you lead with the message ‘I’m well, everything is fine,’” retorts Wilina to Marinie’s retreating back. (Baird will not be totally convinced, but he will at least be somewhat reassured. Wilina prefers to embrace stoicism. Baird thinks Wilina’s capacity to do things like pull three-inch-long desert hartshorn thorns out of her own hand is “horrific.”)

She takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it out slowly, takes another. She wants, briefly and achingly, to be a child again, to be racing her brother and sister on ponies across the empty salt basin of a long-vanished inland lake, under a pink-golden sky that leaves the mountains draped in purple-blue twilight. No uncertainty, no blood, no responsibilities. Okay, some responsibilities. She’d have had to curry and feed the pony for sure. Also, no power or situation on earth could truly ever make her wish to be thirteen again. Long breath out.

Marinie comes back and helps Wilina peel out of the rest of her filthy clothes. (The stains might come out of the skirt, but the bodice is a complete loss unless they dye it a much darker color.) She’s stripped down to just chemise and stays when she hears steps and Baird’s voice in the corridor—he must have been on the way home already.

“I think your mother is changing her dress, so wait one moment and then we’ll _both_ come join you for dinner and see the pictures you made—” he’s saying as he opens the door and closes it behind him.

“Everything’s fine,” says Wilina, although she undercuts her message a little by wincing as Marinie dabs the cut on her hand with cleansing liquid and it throbs angrily.

“Well, fortunately I already have my kit on me,” says Baird mildly, crossing the room and pulling up the stool to sit before her. “I can take over here, Marinie, although if you can send up more hot water, that would be helpful.”

Baird washes the cuts clean, sifts out any gravel and other debris with a fine-tuned lifting spell, and then swiftly heals the broken skin and bruised tissue, leaving her knees stiff and sore, but scabbed over as if after a week had passed instead of an hour. The cut on her hand also gets a swipe of salve and a bandage to protect the skin overnight. He helps her stand upright, unhooks her stays and wraps her in an embroidered robe, before holding her close for a moment, silently.

“Good to walk to the nursery?” he asks, and she nods and lets go.

Dinner is moved to the broad table in the nursery, where Wilina can rest her feet on a pouf and cradle Neal while Baird distracts Cathal and Graeme towards what they learned today and what that’s a drawing of and who hasn’t put all the blocks away in the basket the first time they were asked. “I stopped to help someone and I scraped my hand,” Wilina says when they notice the bandage. This news is received with solemnity befitting the recognition that helping people is important, even when it costs you something.

“How is Jonathan?” she asks Baird in an undertone as he helps her back to their bed. “I should have asked earlier, although,” she pauses as she sighs and stretches her legs out finally under the covers, “I assumed you wouldn’t be here if the answer was anything other than ‘fine.’”

“No, but I am going to go back to find out the casualty numbers and see what other arrangements need to be made for the city,” he says quietly as he goes to close the shades. (It’s barely past twilight. She is _exhausted_. This is ridiculous.)

“Sleep, darling,” Baird adds with a kiss and leaves the room. 

She sleeps, and dreams of Feyzi and Corus burning as she tries to smother the fires with her right hand and her knees, and as blood pools in the streets.

* * *

The official toll of what gets termed the “Great Market Riot” is fifteen dead and thirty-six wounded, a number Baird finds ludicrously low until he learns that those statistics are limited to the actual deaths and wounds inflicted by the knife-wielding assassins who swarmed out of the crowd. (Even Wilina’s new acquaintance George Cooper doesn’t count in those numbers, since his injuries came from re-opening a knife wound obtained prior to the day in question.)

Baird hands over copies of the healers’ reports describing a much wider range of hardship and injury to the Deputy Provost, and then takes his leave to avoid the temptation to make cutting statements about the importance of accurate statistics.

Even as high up as Provost’s House on the Palace Way, Baird can see the signs left by fleeing crowds and advancing companies of guardsmen. He continues up the road towards the palace, turning the different facts over in his head. Maybe the most concerning part, to Baird’s mind, is the lack of people or groups claiming credit for nearly killing the king-to-be. When Zaimid Tasikhe, one of the Carthaki emperor’s younger brothers, died during a tour of remote Ekallatum—what, fifteen years ago now?—no fewer than seven different anti-imperial groups announced they had been behind his death. (Baird’s pretty sure the inquest actually returned the result the prince had been murdered in his sleep by a jilted lover, but he was working back-to-back night shifts in the city infirmary that term and his political memory is a little fuzzy.)

Maybe there _was_ no bigger goal, other than causing as much chaos and injury as possible. Obviously, his mind goes to Roger as a possible culprit, but as Baird walks past the guards from the King’s Own at one of the human-scaled side gates into the palace, he can’t help but think this is a little…unsubtle, at least compared to some of Roger’s earlier plans. Not that Roger didn’t care for excess casualties—the Sweating Sickness of 431, if that was indeed Roger’s work, would be Exhibit A to the contrary—but what a stupid, messy way to try to kill somebody, in an enormous crowd of people. _Amateur_ , says an arch voice in his head that sounds like Wilina when she’s mimicking her aunt Tómnat. _Terrible form, and dismal on the follow-through_. _He really ought to be quite ashamed of himself._

“Glad you have something to smile about,” gripes Jonathan as Baird is shown into the study where the king-to-be is seated at his desk and signing documents with his wrong hand. His shirtsleeve has been slit to fit over the poultice and dressing on his wound, and the fabric re-pinned by a valet to look vaguely presentable. Baird sighs and sets his bag down on the desk before stepping aside to clean his hands.

“You were supposed to be resting, I think I said,” Baird tells him in reply. Jonathan looks a little drawn, he thinks, although his color isn’t bad and the wound is healing nicely, as Baird sees after he draws back the bandages. He re-treats and rewraps it again to be sure, although with lighter bandaging that hopefully should fit under the king-to-be’s normal clothes.

“And the verdict?” Jonathan asks dryly as Baird finishes.

“I think you’ll live,” he tells his future sovereign, gravely. “Maybe refrain from punching anyone for the next few days, just to be sure.”

Jonathan sighs. “Ever since Alanna left, I’ve had to do all my own punching. It’s very tiresome.” He waves Baird to a more comfortable seat in a sunlit windowed alcove and pulls a bell-cord to call for tea.

“How are you?” he asks Jonathan after the maidservant has left. Baird was there when the riding party brought the king’s corpse back to the palace, and after he examined Roald’s body, he knelt alongside Gareth the Younger and Raoul of Goldenlake, pledging his fealty to the king-to-be, who looked exactly as shocked and bereft as any young man who’d just lost his father, king or not. Then Baird had stuck around to send Jonathan to bed with a stiff sleeping draught and to make sure someone (Gareth) would be there when he woke up.

“Tired, mostly,” Jonathan says, picking up his cup. “Concerned, somewhat, by the remarkably persistent rumors my reign is cursed, which will probably redouble in volume after the mayhem yesterday.”

“Do you think you’re cursed?” Baird asks him, choosing the straightforward approach.

Jonathan snorts. “Not especially. Or, perhaps, no more than anyone else. There are a number of issues arising already, stemming from my father’s repeated preference for the most peaceful outcome above all else over the last couple of years—regardless of whether those choices were the right ones.” He shrugs, and then winces as the movement pulls on his still-healing arm.

“Once everything’s settled—the coronation is scheduled for July new moon, if you haven’t heard—I’ve spoken to Gary about needing to go out, to tour every corner of Tortall,” Jonathan continues. “There’s so much of the realm I don’t know, and the people don’t especially know me, any better than they knew my father. They deserve better—maybe we all do.”

“It sounds like you’ve thought about this quite a lot,” Baird says. There’s birdsong floating in on the breeze through the open windows and the air smells like growing things (and also a bit like manure, from where the gardeners are turning over the soil).

“Yes, well, it beats worrying about projections for the harvest or the economy, or meditating over the legality of summarily executing my only living relative, which technically I am empowered to do, although it seems like very much the wrong note to start my reign on.” Jonathan sighs, and his face darkens.

There’s a rapid knock at the door, which swings open before Jonathan can say anything, disgorging Gareth the Younger with a pencil-marked scrap of paper in his hand. “Messenger birds overland from Port Udayapur,” he says without waiting.

“Yes Gary, please come in,” mutters Jonathan under his breath while gesturing for his cousin to bring him the message. He takes it and reads the coded message swiftly, and then breaks into a grin.

“It’s from Raoul,” he says to both Gary and Baird. “He’s found Alanna and they’re coming home. And,” he adds, looking skeptically at the paper again, “they’re bringing a ‘power dumpling’? What the _hell_ , Raoul?”

“They’re both so bad at codes, Alanna and Raoul,” Gary confides to Baird in an aside. “It’s really tragic. That’s what they decided to use for the Dominion Jewel, the _power dumpling_?” he adds to Jonathan.

Jonathan ignores him. “They’re setting sail for Port Caynn immediately as of—however many days ago this was sent. I suppose the diplomatic courier to the port in Tyra, and then switch to a fast cutter for the trip up and around the coast closer to home—say another two weeks. Maybe ten days if the winds are good.” His face has lit up with joy and relief. “The Lioness is coming home.”

Baird thinks about what it means for Jonathan to have his sword arm and probably best friend and former lover (Baird’s not _interested_ in court gossip, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t _hear it_ ) back home again—a figure out of epics bearing a relic out of legends. He thinks about the time the Great Mother Goddess appeared next to him at a court ball and pointed across the room at a furious and sputtering Squire Alan and said “I do like when My chosen have a bit of fire,” and then, when Baird goggled at her (the Great Lady had taken the costume of a courtier in old-style dress for the occasion), added “Boys, girls, both, neither—doesn’t matter. I like to seek those who will set their world alight.”

He thinks about the song he heard in the city last week, where ten-foot-tall Alanna and the Shang Dragon crush Saren armies under their feet, and then are exhorted to cross the Inland Sea and likewise liberate Siraj from Carthaki might. Baird’s happy Alanna is coming home too.

Gary takes his leave soon after, bearing away the message script for inclusion in his personal files and eventually the royal archives, on the grounds that the descriptor “power dumpling” is so embarrassing that it must be preserved for future generations. Baird and Jonathan talk a while longer, until the noon palace bells are ringing and Baird has to go back to the infirmary.

“As a last note, before you go,” says Jonathan as he walks back to his desk and begins to sift through the second stack of papers still waiting his perusal. “The coronation in July – please don’t feel that I expect your children to be there as well, especially if circumstances continue to be unsettled.”

He takes in Baird’s expression and laughs a little mirthlessly as he sits back down at the desk.

“A number of high nobles have intimated, not unreasonably, that they’re concerned by my ability to hold the throne,” he explains, “and they’re loath to bring their families to the capital in the event there’s a civil war.”

“To be fair,” says Baird, “I don’t think anyone thinks an energetic toddler or four-year-old and an elaborate multi-hour ceremony are necessarily a good match.” He sighs, and nods.

“But I appreciate your candor,” he adds to Jonathan. “And the thought of sending the boys to Queenscove and my sister had crossed our minds.”

“Plus, you and Wilina at least can be subtle about it, which is all I ask,” Jonathan says. “Unfortunately, some of my other nobles are not so—let’s say, hmm, aware of complexity.”

“It’s an affliction I think we share,” says Baird, and then bows and takes his leave.

* * *

“So, who or what exactly is this person called Claw?” asks Wilina.

She’s joined Eleni and Myles in the library at Olau house, along with George, who looks mostly recovered after their bloody introduction earlier in the week. Wilina’s knees are still a little tender but mostly healed, and she took the bandage off her hand on the second day, although there’s still a faint line of healing flesh across her palm.

So far, she’s heard about how Eleni came to be living in Myles’ house (Claw broke Rogue law and tried to attack Eleni, who is fortunately unharmed); how George came to be previously injured (Claw sent his men to attack George at the Dancing Dove, wounding him and killing three others); and who is behind the assassins in the marketplace (also Claw).

“He’s,” George and Myles start at the same time, and then both pause to let the other continue. After a silent consultation involving eyebrows, George goes first.

“He came to Corus at the end of last year, claiming he came from the Rogue in Galla,” George begins. He’s a compelling speaker, with a good storyteller’s sense for important detail. “He sent a poisoner after me and my house when I was away on affairs in Port Caynn just after Midwinter, and since then has spent the months trying to destabilize the court and take the throne, although without coming out and declaring himself a challenge.”

George shakes his head, a bleak look in his warm eyes. “He’s getting people killed and killing them himself, left and right.”

“Judging by his accent and behaviors,” Myles says, picking up the thread of the story when George has stopped, “we’d suspected Claw might be a high-born bastard, educated but cast out at some point in his history. A few months ago, I set an agent on to tracking his antecedents, and discovered we were partly right.”

He stops to offer the pot around and pour more tea in their cups. “Claw is Ralon of Malven…and you don’t know who that is,” he adds, smiling a little at Wilina’s quizzical look. Myles settles back into his chair and steeples his hands in front of his chest.

“When my adoptive daughter first came to court, she was the smallest, and seemingly the weakest, of all the pages by a significant margin. Ralon of Malven was a senior page at the time, then a squire, and he took particular delight in tormenting her, until she finally beat him and Ralon left the court, shortly before Midwinter in 430.”

Wilina nods slowly—she’d come back from Carthak in the summer of that year. “I would have only overlapped with him for a few months, although to be fair I couldn’t tell you most of the names of the pages around the court right now, much less recognize them almost ten years on.”

“Well, he’s quite distinctive now,” says George, taking a bite of tea cake. “Big purple scars all down his face, one eye gone—he attacked a girl, in a village in Eldorne hold-lands, and her maid threw acid on his face.”

“Does he have any connections with Delia?” asks Wilina. In response to questioning glances from Eleni and George, she explains, “Not just because of where the assault happened—Malven borders Eldorne for only a small portion of their territory, but their lords’ manors are within an easy day’s ride of each other. The families are historically interwoven, and Delia and Ralon would be roughly of an age.”

Myles looks at her. “Do you have connections in Eldorne?” he asks, sounding a little surprised. “I have had remarkable trouble getting clear information by the usual methods from their lands, and Delia has proved especially...elusive.”

Wilina shakes her head. “There was a marriage alliance being considered between one of my Minchi cousins and the Eldorne heir, but they didn’t get on very well and the families found their interests didn’t coincide much.” Instead, her cousin Sadhbh had pushed for Ambros of Irenroha, who satisfied Minchi feelings by being a very able administrator of his lands, and Sadhbh’s by emerging from an impromptu swim in the lake on his estates with his linen shirt clinging very attractively during her initial visit. (Wilina continues to receive thorough reports on Ambros’ assets from the involved parties; if only Myles had needed intelligence on Irenroha.) “But I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

“So,” asks Wilina, since this has been bothering her since they first spoke of it, “why is it that Claw’s decided to switch from trying to kill the king of the Rogue to trying to kill the king-to-be of Tortall?” She looks at the other three. “If Claw has connections to a noble conspiracy—or, I don’t know, some radical anti-monarchical group—that might make some sense, but it seems like a pretty premature attempt, and an awfully messy way to go about it.”

From the looks on the faces of Eleni, Myles, and George, it seems that problem has occurred to them too, and that they don’t have any answers, although George has an extra whisper of discomfort (and maybe guilt?) that quickly moves across his face before it’s even more swiftly tucked away.

(Later, Wilina will learn that it was the previous night that George went to inform Jonathan about Claw’s _next_ assassination scheme, involving suborned servants and a plot within Jonathan’s own palace walls. Much later, it will occur to her that it’s actually hilarious that Roger’s youthful partners in conspiracy nearly gave his entire game away by trying for their _own_ spot of regicide because they couldn’t handle waiting patiently for more instructions.)

George graciously walks her to the door. She can’t help but notice that he behaves more than a little like a son of the house, which seems appropriate given how Eleni and Myles can’t stop looking at each other when they think no one is watching.

“I’m not sure you remember,” she begins, “but in passing the other day, you offered to help me make restitution for interfering with the omens by confusing the owls.” She shrugs in response to George’s bark of laughter. “I’m smart enough to pay attention when it turns out I might have offended the gods.”

“To be fair, I was mostly pulling your tail, to see what you might do,”—which Wilina thinks is an impressive bit of forethought from a man with a bleeding _stab wound_ —“but, sure, I can certainly help you with that.” He looks at her for a second more, almost like he has the sight or is seeing more than what’s physically in front of him, and then nods and gives her a Player’s formal bow as she steps out of the door. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, at the beginning I said all representations of universities in this fic bear no resemblance whatsoever to any real-world institution in which the author has been employed, but having to ask people to stop juggling badly in university workspaces is, unfortunately, drawn from life.


	5. Chapter 5

George follows through with an introduction to Rispah, who is both his cousin and the technical head of the ladies of the Court of the Rogue in Corus. Rispah shows her where to leave offerings to the Dark Mother at the Temple of the Moon in the Lower City and two other smaller shrines to the Mother in her aspect as the goddess of sexuality and pleasure. When they come out into the forecourt yard of the second shrine, they discover the walls are absolutely covered in owls.

Rispah almost falls over laughing, while Wilina looks very solemnly at as many owls as will make (unnerving) eye contact with her, and then performs a very proper full imperial obeisance, because while she’s not sure what cultural practices the gods prefer, something about kneeling and fully pressing her forehead to the ground seems about right for the moment. When she sits back up, there’s a dark-haired woman standing before her, who shifts into a man, and then into an elegant person of no particular gender at all, who gives her a cheery wave and vanishes.

Rispah looks thoughtful. “This was a good idea,” she declares. “George thought someone had Their eye on you, and I think he was right. Do you ever hear the gods, Wil?”

There’s a skirl of laughter in the air, and it sounds like magic and the anarchic roar of the not-university and the trade winds over Feyzi and the warmth in Baird’s voice when he whispers the world’s subtlest sexual innuendos in her ear. _Thresholds and cross-roads, my dear_ , a voice says. _Things have already begun to change, in ways you can’t imagine._

Wilina is still rapidly blinking to try to clear the spots out of her eyes. “No, but maybe I’m starting to.”

The owls take flight as one, and Rispah declares their work done and hauls her off to the Dancing Dove for a drink.

This is how Wilina comes to be sitting in a cluster of shouting, laughing women having her palm read aggressively by a hedgewitch named Zia (who, in what’s emerging as a theme for the day, has a lot of thoughts about how Wil could be conducting her sex life), when George Cooper and none other than _Jonathan of Conté_ , king-to-be, come through the door.

The room’s not particularly crowded, since it’s not quite twilight and, as Rispah confided in an undertone while choosing a table with good sight-lines to the exits, the running war with Claw has taken loyalties and lives. But a number of people hail George and “Johnny” with raucous shouts as the men make their way across the floor. Jonathan catches Wilina’s eye in passing and then has to abruptly look away when he realizes she’s mouthing _What the fuck?_ at him.

Under the cover of more laughing and shouting around them (Zia has several propositions for Jonathan, in escalating degrees of elaboration, and he’s parrying them all genially in a fairly good imitation of a Corus middle-class accent), Wilina leans over to Rispah next to her. “So, ‘Johnny’?” she asks.

“He’s been coming here since he was a lad of fourteen or so,” Rispah murmurs back. “Pretends to be a rich merchant’s son from the City. We pretend we don’t recognize him. He and George have had their ups and downs, but—” Rispah pauses to take a sip from her glass and shrugs. “I think George has taught that boy more about what kingship means than his own da ever did, and that’s to _all_ our good. George likes things done right.”

“Speaking of things done right, please don’t tell me if the collection of ears is real or just urban legend,” Wilina murmurs back, straight-faced, just to watch Rispah sputter her ale laughing.

“That’s between George and his god. Now, c’mon, finish your lemonade, mage lady, and I’ll walk you back uphill.” She holds up a hand against Wilina’s interjection that she can _definitely_ walk herself home. “No, I promised Aunt Eleni, and Claw’s crazier than a priest. Don’t take risks.”

Four days later, fully half the women Wilina sat with around the table will be dead, killed at Claw’s order or by his hand.

Rispah makes it out alive, and a letter comes by one of Myles’ guardsmen that says _Don’t go out alone_. Wilina closes the door of the library firmly behind her, lights the incense in the shrine, and kneels down and cries. Maybe there’s the ghostly warmth of a hand on her shoulder and a murmur of a friendly voice, from whoever has Their eye on her, like George said. Eventually the tears slow and she shifts to lean her head against the cool wood bookshelves to her right.

George and Myles—honestly, probably Jonathan too, given his presence in the Dove that night—all know and are all working to bring Claw to justice. Previously—gods, even a few weeks ago—Wilina would have been pretty cynical about the chances of getting justice for dead women of the Lower City. But they know who Claw is, and he’ll have fewer and fewer places to hide, and the city serves justice of its own.

She should ask Rispah if there are services being held. Gods, she’s been to so many funerals this year, and those were for the _queen_ and the _king_. And whatever unholy ceremony Thom’s presentation of Roger to the court counts as—an anti-funeral maybe. Chaos feels like it’s chewing on the edges of the realm.

It would be satisfying if she could swear vengeance against Claw and Roger both, if the world was so simple that every conspiracy linked up, and all evil-doers vanquished by the hero by the end of the story. _Give them justice_ , she thinks fiercely, to whatever god is listening. _Give them justice and peace. Let them be remembered, as brave and lewd and kind and whatever else multitudes they were._

And then, _Dark Mother, let me help. To see that the account is settled and justice is done._

_So mote it be,_ says a voice in her ear, and the incense burns out.

* * *

There’s an eminently ordinary and formal message from the king-to-be waiting for Wilina at breakfast the next day, with a request to join him at the palace in late afternoon to speak on the status of magic in Tortall.

It takes her a few tries to actually figure out what the message says. Her head feels heavy and her shoulders and throat are tight whenever she thinks about Claw and all the people he’s killed, and about Roger and all the people he’s probably going to kill. And—it’s all so _stupid._ Crowns and the lengths people will go to wear them, without any thought to how much gods-cursed _work_ it all is. And then there’s the problem of succession and the fragility of new dynasties, although she supposes Roger might view mortality a little differently than other people.

Also, last night she and Baird stayed up late talking about how they could send the boys away to Queenscove while they stayed in the capital. Sorcha has already written with suggestions—a hand-off route of friends and relatives, the old nursery freshly painted, a wet nurse and nannies if the boys’ current caregivers prefer to stay in Corus, although all their household staff are originally Queenscove-born. And Baird and Wilina do care about making sure the boys don’t spend their entire childhoods in Corus and grow up to be well-meaning strangers to their fief. And even if absolutely nothing happens at all, and they have _completely_ overreacted to an imaginary threat, sending their children home now is the obviously correct strategic decision, even though it hurts.

The summer Wilina came back to Corus from Carthak, she stayed with her ha Minch relatives, who eventually admitted they’d spent years of her childhood unsubtly pressing Emry of Haryse to send his children back north to his late wife’s family. (Sadhbh gave the game away when she was showing Wilina the house and said, “And this was supposed to be _your_ room, years ago! I’m glad you’re here now, _finally_.”)

“Why didn’t you say yes?” she’d asked her father, the next time she left the capital for the rolling barley fields and cool shaded ponds of Haryse. “I’m very glad you didn’t,” she had added quickly when he looked at her, “but I’m curious why.”

“Well,” he said, “you three were all well and happy, and I was far more well and happy when you were with me. The rest was just—details.”

_Yes, details_ , thinks Wilina and pours too much milk and sugar in her tea. _Wherein the demons lie._

Per Rispah’s advice, Wilina does take one of the men-at-arms with her when she walks up to the palace in the late afternoon. (George and Myles also thought additional caution was warranted, although they were annoyingly non-specific as to why.) An inkling of an answer comes when she notices the much more visible presence of the men of the King’s Own standing guard throughout the palace and particularly near the king-to-be’s office.

“Ah yes,” says Jonathan as he waves her up from a formal curtsey. “There was another half-baked attempt on my life recently, so we’ve stepped up the guards somewhat.”

“That’s…interesting,” says Wilina as she comes to sit down in the directed chair. “Any links with other plots or plotters you’re aware of?”

“Some suggestive elements, but it appears to have been an autonomous effort,” says Jonathan, spreading his hands. He looks at her for a moment. “And thank you for receiving that statement without any additional angst. I’ve had to explain five different times today, and I’m a little tired of doing it.”

She thinks about telling him how many people have been killed in the past week through Claw’s machinations, or how _dare_ he joke about attempts on his own life when they both know how their world is balanced on a knife’s edge—but, looking at the depths in Jonathan’s eyes, which are suddenly much, much older than the rest of him, Wilina sees he knows. He knows, and he has to keep moving forward anyway.

He knows, and he’s trying to hold on to a vision of the future where _not_ all the worst things happen, and will it into being. The least she can do is meet him there. 

“You do know, as the king,” WIlina points out, “you don’t actually have to explain anything.”

“I know,” says Jonathan, raising one eyebrow. “But I think that’s a bad habit to get into, and perhaps part of how we find ourselves in the circumstances of the present day.”

He shifts in his chair, crossing one leg over the other at the knee, and then points to two file boxes marked with the royal seal that are sitting opened on his desk.

“I was curious about what had been previously submitted to the crown on the prospect of establishing a royal university here in Corus. I’m assured by the archivists that there’s really quite a long documentary record of Tortallan mages making such a case, but I was especially interested in the reports and proposals for the last ten years,” says Jonathan. “Which, to my surprise, I could not find in the proper place for such reports but instead discovered separately, under my royal father’s seal.”

Wilina just wants to pinch the bridge of her nose and curse at Roald a lot, but she’s been told by reliable sources that’s not an effective response to problems. “Would you like a full recap, or simply the summary version?” she asks Jonathan politely instead. “Assuming the majority of those are mine, of course.”

Jonathan makes a show of paging through one of the boxes. “If we limit ourselves just to documents relating to the proposal for a university, you’re second after Harailt actually.”

“So,” begins Wilina, “we should have a royal university. The City of the Gods has a remarkable historical and intellectual tradition, but the Mithran path really limits the number and type of graduates. A royal university should cover broader topics in magical education, but it should also concern itself with law, education, engineering, the non-magical medical arts.”

“Tortallan literacy rates,” she continues, “to the extent that we know them, are below those of neighboring kingdoms. Even in Corus, fewer people can read than in most of the major cities in Galla, otherwise not a realm known for its educational attainments. To get _that_ , you need more teachers and more basic education, and you _cannot_ leave it to the temples, as they do not have the resources or, to be frank, the interest.”

Then she stops abruptly, because Jonathan is holding out an elaborate roll of parchment, dripping with court seals and the untidy signatures of every member of the Council of Lords arrayed under his own.

“Harailt also gave me the hard sell,” says Jonathan. “Congratulations, you’ve got a university. Plans are being drawn up for the requisite land and building purchases. I’m pretty sure you’re already on the faculty but you’ll have to talk to Harailt about that. He left here an hour ago and I think he was skipping. That’s not why you’re here.”

“I…what?” Wilina blinks a few times and looks at Jonathan again. “Dear _gods_ , what else do you have up your sleeve?”

“Well,” says Jonathan, while also gesturing to show his sleeves only contain arms, “while reading your admirably argued reports, I couldn’t help but notice that not only were you and Harailt being rather thoroughly sidelined, the entire Council of Mages essentially ceased to function after Roger returned from his wanderings.”

He looks sad for a moment. “My father chose to rely on Roger, who repaid that faith by never bothering my father about anything magical for the next eight or so years. Uncle Gareth ended up with the brief next, where his emergency solution was to hand problems to you and to Harailt while he tried to extract support and interest from the king, which only briefly materialized around All Hallows, with Thom’s antics.”

Jonathan pauses and spreads his hands. “And here we find ourselves today.”

“I think,” says Wilina, “that the most pressing issues for a reconstituted council are a greater diversity in membership, particularly with leadership from the craft guilds, and ideally non-noble control. I am _happy_ to suggest candidates.” This suddenly feels like a negotiation, although she’s not sure what Jonathan is holding onto as a bargaining chip. (He’s already given them the university, so what would be next—winged horses? An endless book-purchasing fund?)

Jonathan nods. “All good points, but conservative factions in the nobility will be howling for my head on a few different fronts soon, and I would prefer this escapes their immediate notice. I need someone to shepherd the new council through the beginning of my reign, and that person has to already be versed in both palace _and_ city politics.”

“Harailt,” says Wilina immediately. “Excellent choice. Although I hope this isn’t landing on his plate simultaneously with the conversion of the not-university to the real item.”

“Harailt is a systems-builder,” says Jonathan, sitting very still. “I need an analyst and trouble-shooter with wide-ranging social connections who can figure out what’s going on and build alliances. Better yet, an impeccably-connected noble of progressive inclinations with capital to draw on from connections with a conservative but above all else pragmatic family.” The sunlight coming through the window behind him is sinking into the wood on his desk and turning it into a rich, glowing gold.

“Foreign connections a plus,” Jonathan adds breezily. “We’re a little too isolated in all the personal-is-political ways that matter, which is bad when you have rich farmland and very extensive sea and land borders.”

“Can you just spit out what you’re getting at here?” snaps Wilina. There’s a breeze coming in through one of the windows and sending the light curtains fluttering, but she feels like the universe around her has just gone very still.

“Congratulations, Master Wilina, on your appointment as the new head of the Tortallan Council of Mages,” says the king-to-be. “I know you already have a wish-list of who you want to add – perhaps reserve an open seat for public application?”

“Three seats open for public application,” she replies immediately. “And the Council expanded to eight members. Adequate representation is important on this front.”

Jonathan narrows his eyes thoughtfully. “Do you include the Mithrans?”

Wilina nods evenly. “They’re welcome to put a candidate forward for an open seat any time.”

Jonathan’s face lights up with a rakish smirk that—momentarily—makes him look his actual age again. “And what if their candidate is Master Thom?”

“Then we will all get really good at controlling our magic and our tempers,” she says, grinning back at him. “Although,” she adds, letting the smile fall from her face, “I am really actually concerned about that situation, and the implications of our investigation, such as it was, into Thom’s spell-casting and what may have happened to Roger’s Gift.”

She runs through the conclusions she’s formalized since her first conversation with Eleni—the actual report has been sitting locked in her desk for what feels like an age but has only been maybe two weeks. Although two weeks that included another royal funeral, a very public assassination attempt, and a significant number of deaths—and, apparently, the discovery and thwarting of yet _another_ regicidal plot. (No wonder she’s tired.) The palace bells are tolling six by the time she finishes.

“Does Thom know what you’ve told me?” asks Jonathan as she stands to go.

“No, not yet,” Wilina says.

Jonathan nods. “You have my permission to tell him—in fact,” he adds, turning around, “I request it of you, as the king.”

She has to cover her mouth to hide her smile. “As the duchess of Queenscove or as the head of the Council of Mages?”

“Does it matter, Wilina?” asks Jonathan rhetorically, with a breezy wave of his hand as he rises and turns back to his desk.

“Fair enough,” she replies. “Your majesty,” she adds and bows.

* * *

Following the sticky, pallid, too-hot glow of Thom’s power in the palace takes her to the western wing’s ground floor; following the directions of a passing footman takes her to the only currently unlocked door and across to the wide stone steps overlooking the ornamental gardens that descend in elegant terraces down the palace slope. Thom of Trebond is sprawled on the third step down. He’s not even looking insouciant and insolent these days, just mortally _tired_.

“Queenscove,” he says with a half-hearted glance up. “You’re in the palace late in the working day. What new piece of his revitalized government has our king-to-be been asking your opinion of?” 

Every single conversation with Thom reminds her exactly why it was that she could go from “neutral” to “keen on disemboweling” in such a short span of time. That’s not important, but it helps her thoroughly quash the fantasy of conjuring a ball of water and dropping it on his head.

“Head of the Council of Mages, for my sins,” she says, carefully looking past him. The setting sun is turning the clouds in the distance into fluffy clumps of pink and spun-gold and shadowing the trees that cover the rolling hills between Corus and the western coast.

“Huh,” says Thom. “Who’d he pick?” She’s still not looking at him, but from the sound of it, he’s simply curious.

“Me,” she says and can’t quite keep the slow grin escaping onto her face.

Thom gives a harsh caw of laughter. “Good,” he says then, surprising her into looking at him. He’s staring out into the distance too. “You’ll be good at it, you’re already good at it. And the conservatives would shit themselves sideways over a commoner so he’s giving them a powerful noblewoman instead. They’ll still shit themselves sideways, but at least according to the terms of the protests they’ve already made, they can’t be as upset about _this_ one.”

“Thank you,” she says, and then with a skeptical look adds, “I think.”

Thom shrugs and settles back in an event more recumbent position, resting his elbows on the step behind his back. “I actually have some business to discuss with you, if you’re amenable,” she adds. “Regarding certain anomalies I’ve noticed in your magical presence.”

“You were monitoring me?” Thom glares up at her, and she takes that as a yes and decides to sit down and join him on the stairs. It’s a lovely early evening for late spring and she can feel the way the weight of new responsibilities is settling as strength in her bones and clarity in her head, like mastery and marriage and parenthood and now royal duty.

“Of course I was monitoring you,” she says once she’s settled beside him. “Your great experiment knocked out the most powerful healer in Tortall for almost a day. I would find that concerning even if he wasn’t my husband. The backlash made my Gifted newborn scream himself into a fever for hours. _I_ don’t want to go through that again, and—trust me, as I _will_ make it your problem—neither do you.”

Thom has his face in his hands, although he can’t resist saying, mulishly, “You seemed alright when you came to yell at me.”

“I took a lot of stimulants. Also, fury is very motivating.”

Thom just laughed. “You _are_ like my sister.” He sobers, looking vaguely abashed for the first time. “I heard from Jon that a messenger found her. She should be back in Tortall before the end of May. She’s probably also going to want to eviscerate me for—my part.” 

“Your part.” Wilina makes an extremely skeptical face, although she keeps looking out over the gardens. A flight of wood pigeons rises from the boxwood maze in the next level. “What part of this disaster is _not_ your responsibility?” Thom narrows his eyes but stiffly bobs his head in acknowledgement of a fair point.

And that is her opening. “I actually can’t figure out exactly what steps you followed, to raise Roger from the dead,” she says conversationally. (She also refuses to give Roger his restored title. Not to think ill of the dead, but— _for the love of all the gods, Roald_.) “I know you were drawing on some of Bladwyn’s work for the external structure. That should have channeled the power and drawn something back to the source, but you’re necessarily sending something the other way. It’s not unidirectional.” 

“Of course it is,” says Thom back, snapping. “You can modify the sending conditions,” but she’s already shaking her head.

“Not without violating parity. Every other solution I could work out involved tearing the fabric of the Mortal Realms apart.”

“That, at least, was not my intention,” mutters Thom. Wilina ignores him.

“But if there’s just a little bit of power exchange, or—better yet!—a _lot_ of power exchange, the equations work out much easier. Much more in line with the reality of the universe as we understand it.” She turns to look at him, taking in his rising pallor as he begins to realize where she’s leading with this.

“You didn’t invent new physics—you just corrupted your own Gift and fragmented part of your life force while you were trying to jam Roger’s spirit back into his preserved body.” _You idiot_ , she thinks.

“Why on earth did the Carthakis teach you that bizarre vocabulary for speaking about spellcasting?” asks Thom, a bit shrill. Wilina simply shrugs. Abstract magical theory sounds ridiculous in every language.

“What else did you originally do, back in October?” she asks, and this time he tells her. The challenge from Delia, the scroll he discovered by chance with exactly the right set of hints that set him on the path towards another collection, even more obscure, buried deep in the palace archives. (Wilina lets him romanticize the archival dust. The palace librarians had identified the text for her in a matter of hours, once they retrieved the reference codex from storage.)

“And selecting the corpse?” she asks, relentlessly pushing him forward. She doesn’t want to interrupt, now that Thom’s talking, but it’s getting chilly as the sun sets.

Thom sighs. “Lady Delia and I went to the palace crypts. Roger’s was the only tomb that was less than ten years old.”

“So, at no point did you feel that perhaps this whole ‘raising someone from the dead’ business was _suspiciously_ easy?” 

They sit in silence for a minute. Wilina is comfortable letting the conversational pause hang for as long as it takes—she truly wants to know the answer.

“I…plenty of things that are supposed to be difficult are easy for me,” Thom eventually mumbles, sitting up and bending over to rest his elbows on his knees. “I don’t even know anymore. And then I’d made that stupid bet in front of the whole court, and so I might as well go all the way and then see what happened.” His chapped lips start to bleed again and he sits up to rummage in a voluminous sleeve for a handkerchief to blot it. “And now we _all_ see how well that worked out.”

“Vau East-Wind save me; for another such victory and I shall return to Wei alone,” quotes Wilina softly. Then she looks at him. “Do you want help? Because I _will_ help you.”

“The disreputable George said something similar,” Thom rasps with a grimace. “He suggested calling in Master Si-Cham. As if this was some student’s muddle I could get myself out of with the teacher’s help.”

He narrows his eyes and glares at her sideways. “You figured it all out, what the problem was, but you haven’t got any idea of what the cure is, do you? So your offer of help is pretty pointless.”

“Well, I _did_ figure it out this far,” she pushes back.

“Why?” asks Thom again, flatly. “Why even bother. If what you said is true I’m unlikely to be able to cause harm to other people with whatever spells I can still conjure.”

“What—why?” She’s got to throw up her hands in exasperation at that one. “Because this situation is absurd and clearly untenable! Because no one, including _you_ , deserves to suffer like this! Because—dear gods, are you _glowing?_ ”

The sun’s dipped far enough below the horizon that the sky above them has deepened to purple and the shadows of the palace are stretching out around them and Wilina can see the fuzzy burnt amethyst glow around him that illuminates Thom’s thin form.

“Yes, yes, I’m glowing, it’s getting worse, there’s heat too but _don’t you dare touch me_ ,”—he’s scrambling upright several feet away to her left and Wilina stays where she is, hands open to demonstrate that she has no intention of impeding his flight—“look, I’ll take what you’ve said and think about it.” He’s now standing, only a little unsteady, at the top of the stairs back to the palace. “But in the meantime—shove off.” And with that, he turns in a swirl of robes and vanishes back into the dark recesses of the building.

She sits for a bit more and thinks, until there are little bats flitting over the gardens and braving the chilly evening air in search of food. That reminds her that she’s actually incredibly hungry, and Wilina again makes her way out of the palace and towards home, retrieving her guard and turning over the problem of Thom in her head like a puzzle box, looking for the pressure points.

_The disreputable George said something like that_ , she remembers Thom saying. After dinner, she pens a note to George Cooper and sends it via his mother’s address at Olau house.

Then she goes upstairs and taps out a rhythm on the wood of Graeme’s open door. He’d claimed his own bedroom, next door to the nursery, on the grounds that his sixth birthday was coming up in only a matter of weeks. (His birthday is the middle of June, when everything in the garden is green and golden.) 

“Can I come in, little one?” she asks.

He nods, and then scoots over in bed so she can come and lie down alongside him on top of the soft coverlet embroidered with designs of stars. Tomorrow, they’ll pack the boys’ things to take with them for the summer; in three days, they’ll ride with them as far as Haryse, then to Masbolle, where Baird’s older sister Una will take charge and bring them to Queenscove, probably along with her own children—the Masbolles haven’t decided how they feel about attending the coronation yet.

There will be books and the playhouse in the orchard and Baird’s map of secret childhood hiding spaces to explore. Sorcha’s beloved, Maryse, who is her wife in every way other than temple rites, wants help to study re-stocking some of the streams with fish and sent Graeme a letter beautifully illustrated with line-drawings of salmon and water plants asking specifically for his assistance.

“Do dukes always have to stay in the city?” asks a little voice from the pillow beside her. “And duchesses?”

_Oh darling_ , she thinks, and then: _only answer the question asked, not the ones you imagine you hear too._

“Not always,” she says. “We have to stay because we have other duties and promises we made to the king. But we can’t wait to be in Queenscove with you in a few months when our responsibilities here are done.” 

Graeme nods, somehow satisfied with that extremely inadequate answer, and she reaches over to brush his dark red hair back from his face. They talk, a little more every year, about what rank means, about noble responsibility, about how Queenscove fits into the tapestry of the kingdom. Baird mostly takes the lead on those; Wilina feels like she’s still surprised to remember she’s actually a duchess at least once a month, although it’s been weighing a bit more heavily on her these past few weeks. She deliberately doesn’t think about Baird’s will and the other documents that have been sealed and tucked away in an inconspicuous leather folder that will travel with the boys this year, spelled to open for Sorcha and no-one else.

“For right now,” she says, “your duty, Graeme of Queenscove, is to listen to your aunts and your grandfather, and read one new book each week and tell me about it, okay?” She meets his eyes very seriously. “Are you up to the challenge?”

That gets her a small smile and a serious nod, even while his eyelids are drooping. She kisses his forehead and peels herself up from the bed (her knees _still_ hurt) and goes to douse the light.

Four days later, Baird and Wilina ride back to their terribly silent house.

There’s a message from Myles waiting for them: Alanna and the Dominion Jewel have come home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Earning that "accidental religious revival" tag. Additional special thanks owed to seawitches, whose thoughts about faith and reading bird omens inspired the plethora of owls.


	6. Chapter 6

There’s another story Wilina remembers reading as a child, from the same collection of tales from the Roof of the World.

Long ago, a woman from a city on the eastern side of the Roof of the World set out into the hills, in search of the cave of mighty Chitral, where it was rumored a stone was held that could unite warring peoples and bring peace and prosperity to any of the nations. She climbed over the rocky gorges, across the high deserts, through the snow fields and up the ice walls towards the peaks of the highest mountains. She passed through light and through dark, and she carried fire within her, for she knew she must not fail.

When at last she came to the cave of mighty Chitral, on the far western edge of the Roof, she bowed before the spirit and said, “Hear me, Great One. I have come from the city on the eastern edge of the Roof, where a great rockfall has blocked the river on which we trade. Unless we can move the earth, our people will starve and our city shall be no more.”

“Who are you,” asked mighty Chitral, “to come before me and speak thus? What will you do with My Gift?” 

“I am nobody,” said the woman. “But I have walked over earth, through air, across ice, through light and through dark, and I carry fire within me, because I know I must not fail. And with your gift, I will help my people to restore our city once more.” And mighty Chitral sensed in her a will that was implacable as the mountains, and he gave her the Dominion Jewel, so that her city might live.

The Tortallan court holds its breath as Sir Alanna of Trebond and Olau kneels before the king-to-be and holds out a small box lined with black velvet. Inside, there’s a palm-sized faceted purple gem that seems to twist the light around it. “I bring you the fruit of my traveling, Majesty—the Dominion Jewel.” 

Wilina remembers reading that story half-hanging over the edge of her bed and turning the pages with fingers that were sticky with juice from the oranges that grew on the roof of their house in Feyzi, kicking her stocking feet in the air and imagining that she was the woman from the nameless city who would negotiate with mighty Chitral to obtain the Dominion Jewel and save her city from ruin.

There’s more to it—some twist in the ending, but she can’t quite recall what it was. “The Dominion Jewel is a legend,” she remembers their tutor, Sergeant Joah, saying in the schoolroom. “Now how about you tell me three more ways to save the nameless city, perhaps using logic and simple machines?”

When Jonathan reaches for the Jewel, it flares with light, blazing like a small sun in his hand. As he holds it aloft, every eye in the court is on him, this young man who is the king-to-be and who holds all of their futures in his hands.

When he reaches out, just gently, with his Gift—or maybe when the Jewel reaches out to him—there’s a thrum in the air, a deep reverberation that comes up from the bones of the earth. For a dizzying, astonishing, perfect moment, Wilina thinks she can feel the groaning weight of the glaciers in northern Scanra, the tidal push of the Emerald Ocean, the way the spring trade winds send every sheaf of wheat rustling in the fields, how the blossoms on the trees that are just starting to quicken into fruit, how the deep fires of the heart of the earth are making and consuming the rock deep beneath their feet.

It’s overwhelming. It’s _intoxicating_. And suddenly, she’s on her knees, along with Baird, along with Alanna, along with the entire room except for Jonathan and the Saren princess, Thayet _jian_ Wilima, as Jonathan’s voice rings out to every corner of the room. “We thank you, Sir Alanna,” he says, “And we praise the gods for sending us this Jewel—and our Lioness—in this time of need.”

Standing, and joining in the thunderous applause, Wilina sees awe, and hope and belief—in Jonathan, in Tortall and the future—etched on many faces. But she can also see the doubt that creeps in, the shadows that aren’t quite banished. Roger, incidentally, doesn’t appear to be anywhere in the crowd and she hasn’t yet spotted Thom.

Many— _so many_ —senior nobles have yet to formally pledge their support to Jonathan, arguing that the coronation is the proper time to do so, although by this point twenty years ago they had nearly all pledged fealty to Roald. Wilina and Baird have made their formal vows of loyalty already—which, unfortunately, really just means that if Roger deposes and executes Jonathan and his closest supporters in the court, it would be even easier to drum up sympathy for the six-year-old duke of Queenscove as the future king. Power and rank are protective, but all armor can fail under the right circumstances and sometimes, power just serves to draw the blades _towards_ you.

In the thrum after the formal presentations end, Myles and Eleni make their way to where Baird and Wilina are standing. Eleni is resplendent in rich brown silk and gold lace, and Myles looks secretly delighted by every step he gets to take with her hand tucked in the crook of his arm. Wilina introduces Baird to Eleni, hears about the arrival of Alanna and her K’miri friends and the Shang Dragon, and the rush to finish tailoring their clothes for the court ahead of tonight’s presentation.

“And here,” says Myles turning slightly as someone else approaches their group, “I think an introduction is in order. Thayet _jian_ Wilima, may I make known to you their graces, Duke Baird and Duchess Wilina of Queenscove, who are dear friends of mine and of the king-to-be.”

Princess Thayet has the most elegant and precisely-graded curtseys Wilina has ever seen, and a glint of restrained humor in her eye as she greets them and says, with the slightest air of a person who has said the same thing a few times before and is starting to give up on getting the message through, “Sir Myles gives me far too much honor—I am an exile, and I hope only to become his majesty’s loyal and low-born subject.”

“Of course,” says Myles, very bland, when Eleni elbows him.

“Princess Thayet, may we offer our condolences, and our sincere welcome to Tortall,” says Baird quietly, which seems to catch Thayet briefly by surprise, although the look is tucked almost immediately away with a wry smile.

“When Buri and I encountered Alanna and her party, we thought we might as well continue to travel with them on their quest, since anywhere was better than remaining in Sarain. And somehow one thing led to the next, and here we are,” Thayet adds, looking towards where Jonathan and Alanna stand talking near the dais, the small black box clasped tightly in Jonathan’s hand. “Tortall is…extraordinary. Like nothing I could have imagined.”

“They have that effect even on us,” Baird tells her, and Eleni, Myles, and Wilina all nod in agreement.

“I’m not sure I’ve quite got my head around the idea that I am standing in the same room as the actual Dominion Jewel,” says Wilina conversationally. “Sure, there’s scholarship on it, but it’s filed next to the books on lightning snakes and how to go about speaking with mountains.”

“I had been curious about that, actually,” says Myles to her. “I’m familiar with the legends, of course, and some of the historical accounts from Maren, Tyra, and the former Gallan empire, but the actual mechanics of the Jewel are not really a central focus of most of those texts.”

“Unfortunately, the most extensive discussion I’m familiar with personally comes from a book I had as a child,” says Wilina. “I mean, it definitely has some kind of relationship with the elemental magics of the earth, _and_ a receptivity to the Gift of the wielder, which would explain the more extraordinary magical effects, but then also how the Jewel would be said to judge the suitability of the wielder to _rule—_ ”

“Which also,” adds Baird, “doesn’t explain how the Jewel sets up a kingdom to prosper, unless maybe the elemental magics can convince people to, oh, invest in maintaining their cisterns and sewerage better, or the lords to spend more money on education for the kingdom’s children, and more just laws and equitable administration—”

“Yes, darling, but then they’d call it the Administrative Health and Welfare Jewel, and that is not nearly as catchy—”

“I would argue that those are the most important elements of making a kingdom just and prosperous,” says Thayet in reply, looking at both Baird and Wilina. “But I agree with you that it’s difficult to see how a magical artifact, no matter how powerful, could institute those changes without astute human guidance.”

“For reference, Thayet, Baird is chief of the palace healers, and Wilina heads the Tortallan Council of Mages, and is now part of the faculty for the new university,” adds Eleni, who looks deeply amused.

“Is that unusual?” asks Thayet. “For a noblewoman to head the Council of Mages?”

“In long historical perspective, not very unusual,” says Wilina as she tries to surreptitiously determine who is in earshot; no one nearby appears to be paying attention. “More recently—say the last hundred, hundred-and-forty years—there have been no women on the Council at all. Alanna’s…example has opened up opportunities for the king-to-be to make unorthodox appointments. But all of those have to be calibrated carefully.”

She meets Thayet’s gaze. “My appointment is acceptable because I’m qualified”—“More than,” mutters Baird—“and there’s a broad recognition that magical affairs should be…better managed. But even more than that, I’m a high-ranking noblewoman from a conservative military family. I’m related by blood or marriage to half the members of the Council of Lords. In all ways except my politics and my sex, I am an _extremely_ traditional pick.”

“And yet,” says Thayet, with a knife-edge smile, “no one pays enough attention to your politics because of your sex. And then they’ll look around in ten years and say ‘How did things change?’”

“There are plenty of clever people with big ideas already, for schools and guilds and all kinds of new things,” says Wilina, shrugging. “It’s a collective effort.”

“I had been thinking,” says Thayet, “of starting a new life in Tortall, and selling my jewels to start a school for commoners. Although every time I bring this up, Alanna seems to change the topic of conversation,” she adds, with a slight sideways look at Myles and Eleni, who both shake their heads—they either don’t know what Alanna has planned or have decided not to intervene. 

“Leaving aside whatever oddball schemes anyone else here seems to have cooked up, I would be delighted to talk with you about your thoughts on education,” says Wilina.

Thayet dips her head gracefully. “I will look forward to the opportunity, as I look forward to coming to know the kingdom and the court better.”

The conversation takes other turns, into what Thayet has seen of Tortall so far, followed by introductions to her bodyguard, Buriram Tourakom, who is more impressed when she learns Wilina also grew up in the mountains, although the peaks of southern Tortall are nothing compared to the mountain highlands of the K’mir clans. Farther off in the crowd, Wilina catches sight of an elaborately dressed person with a divinity’s bright eyes, who winks before vanishing again behind a knot of courtiers. Now that she’s seen one divine personage in Corus, they don’t seem to be going away. 

At one point, Wilina looks up, towards the gallery where musicians would be playing if the court was not in mourning, and thinks she sees Roger leaning against a pillar, mostly shadowed and hidden from sight, but watching everything below very intently. _What would he do, with the power of the Dominion Jewel in his hands_? she thinks, and then suddenly feels very cold, because she remembers the rest of the story.

After many years had passed—although it seemed as only an instant to mighty Chitral—the woman from the nameless city returned. She was very old, and her breath was weak in the thin air of the high peaks, but the fire still burned within her, and she bore Chitral’s Jewel in her hands.

“Why have you returned to me, and why do you bring me back the Dominion Jewel?” asked mighty Chitral. “Has your city not survived and prospered in the passing years?”

“Mighty Chitral, my city did grow and thrive for many years,” she said as she knelt. “With your jewel, we freed the river and shaped the earth through which it ran. We created a mighty fire that carved a tunnel through the mountains, and our city for a time was the crossroads of the world, and the envy of all who came near.”

“But in our great power, we grew complacent, and allowed a great evil to grow within our home,” she continued. “We have conquered, and we have stolen, and we have ignored the pleas of the hungry and the weak. This _must_ not continue, and thus, I return here to bring your Jewel back to you.”

And her heart blazed—with the strength of the mountains, with the will of the glacier, the power of the winds that whipped around the highest peaks, and the wisdom of the undying flame from which the universe began and to which it shall return—and she held out the Jewel to Chitral, and said: “Let my city burn.”

* * *

The next day, Wilina is coming up from a morning in the palace libraries—half to survey their literature relating to the Dominion Jewel, half to begin some delicate negotiations on access conditions for university- or council-affiliated mages—and finds herself turning into a sunny courtyard at the same time as the one and only Alanna of Trebond and Olau. It’s still only late May, but the noon sun is blazing in the cloudless sky and the air already feels summer-warm.

Alanna looks cool and comfortable in her simple breeches and shirt, and she holds herself differently, a year and half away from the palace and no longer as tightly bound either figuratively by enforced palace social convention or literally by the elaborate corset set-up she’d used to disguise her figure during her years as a page and squire. The differences are subtle—mostly, they drive home how much Alanna has always been herself, even under a different name.

As the prince’s squire, Alan of Trebond had been worth paying some attention to for purely political reasons, although Wilina probably would have gotten to know him in any event through Baird, who considered trying to draft Page Alan into the healers corps after the Sweating Sickness and during the Tusaine War, and Myles, who clearly had seen the boy as a protégé from the start. 

The sun catches on Alanna’s flaming hair, cropped to just below chin-length, but still long enough to fly out in an arc as she swivels around quickly, and then chuckles. “Sorry, I didn’t expect to see anyone there,” she says. “I cannot _believe_ how crowded the palace seems to me these days.”

Wilina laughs and falls into step with her. “Well, you’ve been away for what, a year and a half? That’s a lot of time to get accustomed to the open road. Welcome home, by the way.”

Alanna snorts a little in reply. “And none too soon, but thanks—it’s good to be back.” She turns a little to look sideways and take in Wilina—simple dark summer gown under an open mastery robe in slightly faded red linen, mage kit in a satchel over one shoulder—and then says, a little cautiously, “Either court fashions changed a lot more in the last year, or I’m guessing you’re not here for a social function.”

Wilina grins. “Mage robe,” she says, pointing, “and mage kit. Some university business and some Jewel research. I’m headed back across the river next, if you’re riding that way.” She sees Alanna is seriously considering it. “I’ll even throw in an introduction to a good eating-house next to the university-to-be. It’s called ‘Bread and Meat,’ and you will never, ever guess what they serve.”

“Well, in _that_ case,” says Alanna, and she goes to saddle up her horse.

Wilina and Baird have both started riding from home to the palace and the city, even if sometimes, in the crush of traffic on the Palace Way and on some of the city bridges, Wilina thinks it would be faster to go on foot. The advantage of a horse is that she’s elevated above the crowd, better able to see threats coming, and able to escape a situation faster, which almost outweighs the downsides of needing to constantly find places to stable the horse while going from place to place. (And clean horsehair off her skirts. Also constantly.)

“Did I know you were a mage?” Alanna asks as they turn out on to the road that wraps around the palace walls and downhill towards Corus.

“Well, it’s definitely never been much of a secret,” says Wilina, confused, before her brain catches up with her mouth a little more. “But right—you and I would have met properly after Roger came to the court. It had been…strongly impressed upon me that it was better to not draw his attention in any way.”

“Really?” says Alanna. She looks both incredulous and intensely relieved.

“First private lesson at the imperial university, yes,” confirms Wilina with a nod. She looks at Alanna as they bring their mounts to a halt while they wait for a pair of heavy carts to clear the intersection ahead of them. “It was never just you that had doubts,” she says quietly.

“I did think, at first—well, at second thought, the first thought was that I was going to have to strangle Thom—that maybe it would be good to have another chance to talk to him, to see if I had made a mistake,” Alanna confides. Then she shakes her head. “And then I did, and—I don’t know if being above the ground when he’s supposed to be below it rearranged his mind, or if he was always like this, but he’s clearly not in his right mind now.”

They’re coming up on the Daymarket, where signs of fire and violence can still be seen on the scarred walls and hastily re-built market stalls, some with new awnings that replaced ones torn down in the market place attack and the crowd’s frantic flight. The market is still crowded—people need to eat, and the Daymarket had reopened with only one day of closure—but everyone looks around cautiously as they make purchases or gossip in an undertone, and no one seems to be lingering around the central fountain anymore. (A few people even spot Wilina and Alanna on horseback and reverse their direction, keen to avoid becoming collateral casualties of anyone else’s half-witted political scheme.) 

“I had this sense while we were travelling,” Alanna says, “that I needed to get back home, that something was wrong here, but I was not prepared for how _many_ things could go wrong, all at once.”

“To be fair, I didn’t have ‘resurrection of a royal duke credibly accused of attempted murder and treason’ on my Midwinter prediction list either,” says Wilina dryly.

“He looks terrible—Thom, I mean,” Alanna says, turning to look at Wilina. “He said he knows what’s wrong with him but he doesn’t think it’s fixable.” She snorts. “He thinks Roger probably knows exactly what the problem is, but I wouldn’t trust anything that man says as far as I could throw him.”

Wilina does spend three seconds indulging in imagining what it would look like if small, stocky Alanna were to throw Roger across a room, or perhaps off a significant drop of some kind—the palace curtain walls, maybe. Prolonged political and personal stress is starting to make her both irreverent and a little bloodthirsty.

“Along with George, I have also been writing to Master Si-Cham,” she tells Alanna, “in the hope that he has some relevant wisdom or expertise to offer, and that Thom might listen to him. But in the meantime, I’m also going to keep working on this myself, and with as much help as I can bring in from the other scholars I know.”

Wilina’s eye catches momentarily on the wall of the Cat and the Sickle, where she saw the crude graffiti of Thom and Roger a few months ago. It’s been painted over, apparently in preparation for a new mural dedicated to…the Dark Mother. Wilina laughs out loud when she sees the craftswoman standing on a ladder using charcoal to sketch out the shape of three owls, wings spread and talons outstretched over a landscape that looks _suspiciously_ like the city common.

“Interesting art,” says Alanna, turning to look as they ride past and raising a hand in greeting to the artist. “I feel like I’m seeing a lot more of the Goddess in the Maiden Warrior and Dark Mother aspects than I did even a year or so ago.”

“Tell me more about your last year,” Wilina asks. “How’d you find living in the southern desert?”

Alanna tells her about the southern desert, and the route she took across Maren, through Sarain, and up into the Roof of the World. She tells her about trekking through the blizzard to the cave, and fighting Mighty Chitral in the form of a rock-ape and basically losing—which _is_ the point where Wilina almost falls off her horse, partly because Alanna, much like George, is an excellent self-deprecating storyteller, and also because Wilina is imagining her eight-year-old self absolutely losing her mind at the idea that the story of the Dominion Jewel was _real_ and that she hadn’t been the one walking into the cave to claim it.

Then she has to explain that to Alanna, who also thinks that’s very funny, although she gives Wilina a curious side-long glance as they clatter off the bridge onto the road on the north side of the river.

“I’ve sort of wondered if there are more noblewomen around who would have done what I did,” she explains when Wilina raises her eyebrows at her in a question. “Would you have become a knight, if it was an option?”

“Probably not, honestly,” she says to Alanna. They ride a few more paces while Wilina thinks more about it. “I was always more interested in seeing what I could do with the Gift, and even if gender _was_ no restriction—a lot of my family on both the Haryse and ha Minch sides is in the Tortallan army, which is a different set of priorities and skills than those you need as a lone knight.”

“So, you’d rather be a mage than a general, and a general than a knight?” asks Alanna. She laughs and then looks thoughtful, and a tiny bit sad. “I suppose it’s also harder to imagine disguising yourself for years if everyone around you knows who you are. I understand from Baird that you have a lot of family.”

Wilina thinks briefly about how isolated a noble family has to be for a child to successfully transform into a second twin brother and have no one notice. (And in a “temporary disguise” kind of way, not a “Hey, I’m actually a boy” kind of way, which is how another set of her Minchi relatives learned they had four sons instead of three.)

“I also think Roald would have abdicated on the spot if he thought he had to deal with a _second_ generation of Haryse generals,” Wilina adds, aiming for levity. “He was so glad when my father finally retired and stopped sending him reports—although apparently Roald was doing the same thing with all the recommendations I filed on behalf of the informal mages’ guild of Corus, just sticking them in his private files and sitting on them.”

Alanna is shaking her head. “Jon really has his work cut out for him. He asked me to be his champion today, by the way—maybe Baird already told you, he was there.”

“Huh,” says Wilina, thinking about it. “I wonder how much political groundwork he did before announcing that—although also, or maybe first, congratulations!”

“That’s the thing,” says Alanna, shaking her head again. “ _Everything_ is political now—it’s a lot to take in.” Then she grins. “But it will be good to have a purpose, to be Jon’s sword arm. Now we just have to get through the next few weeks to the coronation.”

“And then re-build the realm. And solve some critical infrastructure problems. And deal with the kingdom’s rampant illiteracy. And the price of iron is going up for some reason and we can’t figure out why—” Wilina cuts off when she’s interrupted by a fantastic growl from Alanna’s stomach. The other woman’s face is beet-red.

“Let’s get some lunch,” she says, and they trot the rest of the way down the street.

* * *

Then, suddenly, it’s fully summer and the weeks leading up to the coronation are flying by.

On one level, everything feels ordinary, warm and borderline hopeful. Baird and Wilina work, at the palace and at the university that is rapidly beginning to take shape in institutional structures and people, if not nearly so quickly in physical buildings. (Harailt is in raptures, despite the many small frustrations.) The reconstituted Council of Mages holds its first few meetings and begins to settle on the new members, including one religious representative from the Temple District—although a priestess-mage dedicated to the Black God rather than Great Mithros, which Wilina privately guesses is the outcome of some intense inter-temple wrangling and deep-seated concern about what the Mithran order is teaching or failing to teach its adepts, if Master Thom is a representative specimen.

They conjure magical fires in the library hearth to speak to the children and Sorcha and Maryse at Queenscove and pretend (to themselves) that everything is ordinary and that they’ve just decided to send the boys ahead of them _this_ year, because why not.

Neal has started creating balls of green light and sending them floating around the nursery, which is definitely not surprising, but maybe a little—poignant. Graeme turns six surrounded by his brothers, aunts, and cousins—Baird’s sister Una comes from Masbolle with her husband and their children—and there are games in the gardens and woods around Queenscove castle. And that’s the point—that duty is necessary and right, and it coexists with joy and fun. Graeme sends them careful handwritten reports each week about the books he’s read and the fish in the streams and what the clouds look like and where in the castle they explored today, and sometimes Cathal adds art to the backs—and fronts—of each sheet of writing paper. They save every single one.

They’re invited to more dinners at Olau house, and sometimes to the informal picnics that Alanna, Buri, and George take to having on the banks of the Olorun outside the city. Jonathan continues to call on Thayet, taking her riding and to see the portrait gallery and the libraries and the armories and the botanical gardens, and to have tea in the orangery and lunch near the boxwood maze and quiet suppers in the royal wing. After being invited at the last minute to several of these events, Baird and Wilina realize they’re being co-opted as extremely lackadaisical chaperones.

“Wait, is _that_ why we’re here?” Wilina starts to say at one early evening get-together on the western terraces of the palace, when Roanna of Naxen smacks her in the arm with a fan and gives her a pointed look.

“I absolutely did not sign up for this,” Wilina whispers back, straight-faced. “They’re adults, they can do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t overturn the monarchy, because I can’t handle that this month.”

“View this as an investment, Wilina,” Roanna hisses. “A modicum of propriety now will make everything easier in the long run, and I need you as a reliable witness.”

“Yes ma’am,” says Wil promptly, and Baird has to turn away swiftly to keep a straight face, although the redoubtable duchess of Naxen still shoots him a pointed look. 

“Mages,” says Roanna with a sniff.

One advantage of being pulled in as an accidental high-ranking witness to the early stages of a royal courtship is that Wilina does actually have plenty of time to talk with Thayet. Who, as it turns out, is brilliant.

(“Oh thank the _gods_ ,” Wilina says to Baird later. “Brains in the royal family, what a concept.”)

For all that Thayet was deliberately _not_ raised to be her father’s heir, she has clearly had a superb political education, with a keen sense for how small and strategic actions can completely unravel or rework the fabric of a realm. Her plan for creating schools for commoner children is well-thought out and scalable. Better yet, the princess-in-exile understands when there are things she does not or cannot know, and where she needs to draw in local expertise. Wilina puts her in contact with the committee tackling basic education at the university-to-be. Although, as she watches Jonathan thoughtfully and determinedly offering Thayet the run of his library, his palace, and probably his heart, Wilina thinks she now understands why Alanna and Myles had been so unusually vague when expressing support for Thayet’s original plans to be a mere ordinary subject.

The next time she joins George, Buri, and Alanna for a picnic, Wilina waits until Alanna has taken a big sip of her drink and Buri and George are safely out of earshot before asking “So, how long after you met her did you decide Thayet would make an amazing queen of Tortall?”

Alanna sputters helplessly for a few minutes until Wilina pounds her on the back. “About fifteen minutes,” she growls, red-faced. “Oh, stop laughing.”

On other levels, though, it is far from an ordinary summer in Corus. Because of the coronation planned for July, the majority of the court hasn’t left for their fiefs—but plenty of families have sent their children away. Most of the major noble families still haven’t pledged fealty, the ha Minch among them, although at least three of the cadet branches are implicitly pledged by their heads’ oaths of loyalty to the Tortallan army and the king-to-be as their commanding officer. The Minchi will come around, certainly, provided Jonathan can hold the throne—but it seems like they won’t prematurely weaken their own strategic position to serve as ballast for a doomed endeavor.

Many of the other fiefs in the far northeast near the border with Galla and Tusaine are also adamantly non-committal; they have been left to their own defense by the crown so many times in the last twenty years that they’re almost beginning to think they might be better off without paying attention to a king in Corus at all. Fortunately for Tortallan coherency, the heir to Fief Sinthya is the least charismatic political-hopeful Wilina has ever encountered; as long as he’s insisting on being a major player in any secessionist movements, they are unlikely to succeed, which buys Jonathan more time.

“I’m taking these as symptoms rather than causes,” Jonathan tells Baird in one of their private conversations. “The best course of action is to treat the underlying illness, and I can’t really address the underlying problems until I’m crowned, so…”

“It’s wonderful to realize you’ve paid attention in all our conversations over the years,” Baird says, and then ducks when Jonathan pretends to hit him. 

The major merchant houses are clearly nervous, and so are their trading partners in other kingdoms. The seamstress remaking Wilina’s summer court gown tells her that two of the largest Yamani silk-trading houses have chosen not to sell in Tortallan markets this year, and the Tyran fabric merchants have been asking for payment up front rather than on their usual delayed schedule. The odd fluctuations in the secondary iron purchasing market have continued, much to the confusion of the guilds, since no one seems to know who’s doing the purchasing or where the missing metal has gone. The merchants, at least, aren’t particularly concerned about Roger making a bid for the throne—they’re more focused on the ordinary accumulation of myriad little tensions and weaknesses that can easily force a big kingdom like Tortall apart at the seams.

In Corus, Claw has gone to ground rather suddenly, leaving both the Provost’s men and the loyalists of the Rogue hunting high and low for his conspirators. Their ability to absent themselves from the city on fairly short notice points towards outside connections with money and lands, but even if Claw was spotted lounging on a divan in the gardens at the Eldorne estates outside Corus, there’s literally nothing any of them can do.

George, Myles, the Lord Provost, even Gareth the Younger are all on the lookout for unusual movements of warriors, or even just suspiciously large groups of unattached men in the city. Unfortunately, between the Beltane festival and the forthcoming coronation, visitors to Corus are arriving in droves every day. Short of setting up road blocks and calling up the army, which Jonathan entirely reasonably opts _not_ to do, there’s no way to track the antecedents and destinations of every new arrival. 

One very hot and humid day, George appears abruptly at the Queenscove house gates and is uncharacteristically quiet until Wilina has poured them both cold tea and settled them at one of the large tables in the kitchen, pleasantly cool and dim without the hearth fires going.

“Jon’s pardoned me and given me a writ of nobility,” he says to Wilina without preamble. “He needs a confidential agent, to track problems,” he tosses his hands vaguely, “or prevent these kinds of disasters happening, he says, and to do _that_ , I have to be a fucking baron.”

Wilina thinks about it, looks at him for a moment, and then gets up to walk into one of the large pantries and comes back out bearing a heavy glass bottle and another pair of glasses. She pours them each a finger’s height of clear herby liquor and puts the glass down in front of George, who downs it immediately and shudders.

“I thought mages didn’t drink,” he says, wiping watering eyes. “And even if you did, why in the Trickster’s name would you drink _that_?”

“It’s ceremonially appropriate,” she responds, taking a very small sip. Caraway fumes reach up to burn the inside of her nose. “Do you need me to help talk you into this, or would you just like a sounding board?”

“I’d been thinking of giving up the Rogue anyway,” he says by way of an answer, “It was beginning to feel as though it was time for a change.”

“Interesting set of challenges,” she says, pouring him another drink. “Nice extension of your current skillset. Also, the kingdom’s intelligence-gathering apparatus is a shambles—Myles’ little network only can do so much. It also has some marked social limits, despite many years of Myles’ best efforts.”

“Plus, I could marry Alanna,” George says, and then looks, a little betrayed, at the glass in his hands.

“I’m pretty sure you could marry Alanna tomorrow if you asked her,” points out Wilina. “Although I get that she’s a little distracted by the coronation, so logistically it probably would make more sense to wait a bit.”

She’s pretty sure he’s not actually drunk—the liquor is strong but it’s not _that_ strong—and this is more about wanting to have someone to speak to while he processes some fairly significant feelings. Actually, Wilina realizes she’s deeply touched by George’s faith in choosing to come vent to _her_. 

“So, which barony did Jonathan grant you?” she asks, after George has worked through a few more rounds of doubts and entirely reasonable concerns about this abrupt shift in lifestyle, and also put a significant dent in a ball of soft cheese and some fig-studded crispbread. He may have poured himself a third shot of the liquor too—Wilina’s still very slowly sipping at hers. (The key to mixing the Gift and alcohol is _extreme moderation_.)

“Pirate’s Swoop,” he says. “About a day’s ride south of Port Caynn. It’s probably gorgeous.”

“Congratulations, my lord,” she says solemnly, raising her glass and catching his eye. He snorts and raises his glass to tap against hers and downs the contents once more. After more crispbread and cheese and a few glasses of cold tea and water, she sees him back to the door, where he unexpectedly gives her a hug. “You’re a good friend, Wil.”

“Take care, George,” she says, hugging him back.

* * *

When not chaperoning royals, designing a university, wrangling the Council of Mages, or being a supportive friend, Wilina continues to work on investigations into the spell theory behind the Dominion Jewel. A little unexpectedly, Thom volunteers to help her. He has rather more time available in his schedule, and an even more thorough knowledge of the esoterica held in the palace libraries. Wilina knows from Alanna that Roger is often around whenever she visits Thom. For most of June, Wilina never spots Roger herself, which is almost more unnerving.

Then there’s one afternoon, the day after Beltane, where she walks in Thom’s workroom to discover Roger lounging arrogantly in a chair before Thom’s unlit fireplace. Thom’s standing across the room, reading something from a scroll laid out across his workbench, seemingly oblivious to the other man’s gaze. Roger looks…triumphant, almost like he’s luxuriating in the view of Thom’s emaciation, his dull hair and bleeding lips and cuticles, his sallow and purple-glowing skin. It’s the satisfaction of an artist or a craftsman surveying handiwork that’s been well-performed and Wilina knows the moment that Roger’s eyes shift from Thom to see her in the open doorway observing him that she’s just put _another_ target on their backs.

She still tries anyway. “Roger,” she says, aiming for bland and politely bored as much as she can while still adamantly refusing to ever use his restored ducal title. “What an unexpected surprise. You’re usually out when Thom and I take time to catch up.”

When he was alive the first time, Roger had truly beautiful manners. They seem to have not left the grave with him, since his rise to his feet is a bit ungainly and his vaguely-sketched bow in her direction has all the politesse of a molding wedge of cheese.

“Wilina,” he says, and it does truly unnerve her, to hear her name on his lips, even if it’s only fair that he forgo her title in exchange for her deliberate rudeness. “What a surprise. Tell me, have you been holding out on us for all these years, or has my royal cousin decided to compound his father’s distaste for the magical arts by making the Mages’ Council a monument to mediocrity?”

“You do have a way with words,” Wilina says slowly. She doesn’t take the bait—it’s better actually if he thinks her merely adequate, ordinary, even barely mediocre. All she needs is to keep his attention diverted safely away from her actual _secret_ Dominion Jewel research group, made up of guild mages and hedgewitches and oddballs who talk to glaciers and one very quietly angry mage-priestess dedicated to the Black God, who absolutely would climb the Roof of the World to tell Chitral to burn Tortall to the ground if Roger ever got his hands on the Dominion Jewel.

So far, they’ve broken down and reconfigured more than half of the spells Thom has found in the palace libraries related to the use of the Jewel. If everyone involved lives through the coronation, Wilina wants to try to direct them to the even more difficult task of continuing to collaborate long enough to write up their findings in an edited volume—although for security reasons, it will probably end up under seal in the royal archives for at least half a century.

(“The price we pay for knowledge,” says the mage-priestess. Wilina thinks it’s probably easier to be sanguine about projects that will only come to fruition after your lifespan when you serve the god of Death.) 

“Mages of my caliber are so very difficult to find, it’s true,” Roger says with a shrug and he stalks towards the door, getting just a little too close as he goes to leave. Classic intimidation, since he’s a good bit taller than she is. “What a pity,” he continues, “that you weren’t talented enough to disrupt my plans.”

“Well, win some, lose some,” she says casually, with a shrug. Her studied indifference actually seems to rankle him more than any more pointed rejoinder, and those startlingly blue Conté eyes narrow in her direction before Roger shrugs and shows himself out.

“That is _exhausting_ ,” she says to Thom, coming into the room more fully and setting her bag down on the central table, ignoring the violet bloom that still comes up automatically whenever anything touches the surface.

He croaks a harsh laugh. “Tell me about it.”

“So, did you two ever--?” Wilina starts to ask, because there’s a definite additional _dynamic_ to the way that Roger and Thom interact. “Actually, never mind. I am so sorry, that is _none_ of my business.”

“Did we two ever what, fuck?” asks Thom, bluntly. One pale red eyebrow quirks up. “Aren’t you famously observant? You are, apparently, the _last_ person in the court to have worked that out.”

“How on earth did you find the time?” she asks, since—in for a penny, in for a crown. They overlapped at court for what, _three days_ before Roger died? 

“I’m sure I don’t have to explain the mechanics to you, Queenscove,” says Thom, very arch.

“No, that’s fine,” says Wilina. “Carry on, with my abject apologies for prying.”

That just makes Thom laugh even harder, although he does at least wave an absolving hand in her direction.

They’re sitting down to go over Thom’s latest findings when there’s another knock at the door. Wilina rises to answer it, since she’s somewhat closer and, plus, it’s painfully apparent that Thom has crossed the boundary into the territory of “deathly ill,” even though he adamantly refuses to see Baird or any other healers.

“Do come in,” Wilina says to Alanna, who’s waiting in the corridor, and she stands aside to let her in, followed by George (wearing a priest’s habit for whatever peculiar reason of his own—he’s been officially pardoned, so presumably he’s not in disguise to avoid arrest, although maybe old habits die hard and he wants to keep in practice), and then by a very elderly man wrapped in the orange robes of a Mithran adept.

“Master Si-Cham,” Wilina says and bows to him as deeply as she would to her own teachers.

“You did WHAT?” shrieks Thom, his harsh voice cutting across whatever Si-Cham was about to say in reply. “How DARE YOU interfere—”

In fairly short order, Wilina, George, and Master Si-Cham are back in the hallway outside Thom’s rooms, while the sounds of the Trebond siblings shouting at each other threatens to strip the paint and plaster off the walls.

“Perhaps some tea?” Wilina suggests diplomatically. “Give them some time to work that out between the two of them.”

“I CANNOT _BELIEVE_ YOU—” bellows Alanna through the door.

“YOU HAD NO RIGHT, AT ALL—” shouts Thom right back.

“I think this is going to take a while,” says George sagely. “We might as well leave them at it and have Alanna send for us again once Thom comes around.”

“Perhaps we might have some time to chat,” says Master Si-Cham to Wilina as they walk. “You’ve alarmed some of my more worldly brothers quite notably, Duchess Wilina, with your council and your university.”

Wilina is momentarily completely torn between her strongly-held belief that the Mithran order should _not_ hold a monopoly on advanced magical education in Tortall and her deeply ingrained urge to be very polite to this very, very old man.

“It’s been very good for them,” Master Si-Cham adds with a chuckle. “Really quite remarkable. We ought to have had a revolution in this area many years ago.”

“That…thank you? I think?” Wilina says in reply, very nonplussed at the direction this conversation has begun to take, and still a little distracted by the fury and anguish in Thom’s voice. Then she pulls herself together. “I would be happy to chat with you at more length.”

“Perfect,” says George, dryly, “because I think we have maybe a week’s worth of time to kill before Alanna and Thom are done yelling at each other.”

* * *

George’s estimate is only a little off—it actually only takes five days before Thom consents to speak with Master Si-Cham. At that point, the two men cloister themselves in Thom’s rooms in the palace, even sending Roger on his way when he wanders through in a desultory manner one afternoon, and leaving even Alanna to kick her heels and wait for word as the coronation day draws closer and closer.

A few days in, Baird finds Alanna walking out of the offices of the court scribes and notaries, with a heavy document tube marked with a magistrate’s seal in one hand and Faithful by her feet. The cat chirrups a friendly mew before climbing straight up Baird’s leg; he appreciates that at least the cat is careful to only hook his claws into fabric and not flesh.

“Important business?” he asks, while an armful of purple-eyed black cat. Baird’s never known an animal that does _smug_ quite as well as Alanna’s little familiar.

Alanna shrugs and gestures at the tube. “Updating my will, actually,” she says. “I know it’s a bit macabre and all, especially only a few days out from the big coronation celebration, _but_ —”

“Never hurts to be prepared?” Baird offers.

“Precisely,” says Alanna with a grimace, and she begins to walk with him back along the hall. Faithful flops over in Baird’s arms and starts to purr as he shamelessly begs for attention.

“I did the same thing,” he tells Alanna after a few paces. “Wilina and I sent the boys off with all our updated documents. The family advocate thought we were out of our minds, at first—we’d only just finished adding Neal to all the family records and reworking settlements a few months ago. Then the attack on the market happened, and the advocate thought we were very sensible and that he’d be better off if he left for his summer home near Blue Harbor.”

“I hope that we all feel very stupid for having over-reacted, this time next week,” Alanna says. Then she pauses and turns to him. “You have a sword, right? You’re not a knight, but you do have a sword?”

Baird looks at her, a little surprised by the abrupt conversational turn. “Yes?” he replies. “Oh, for the coronation, of course.”

Technically, a blade is part of any nobleman’s most formal dress, although he rarely wears his—it mostly lives in its sheath high out of reach of small hands in the household armory. “Yes, I’m planning on seeing to the blade tonight or tomorrow,” he says. “Better safe than sorry.”

Alanna looks bemused, and also a little shamefaced when she quirks an eyebrow at him. “Do you actually know how to fight with it?”

In his arms, Faithful makes a _brrrrrpt_ noise that sounds like he’s scolding Alanna. Baird laughs, while Alanna hastily adds, “Not to impugn your fighting abilities, it’s just—”

“It’s fine,” Baird says, before she can dig herself any deeper. “Yes, I know how to fight with it. Not enough to be particularly good in a duel, so I try to avoid those, but enough to defend myself, my children, a patient on a battlefield.” He laughs a little. “My oldest sister, Suranne, used to worry like you do,” he tells Alanna. “She made me continuously practice every time I came home from the university.”

Alanna sighs in relief and nods, although she still looks a little pink with embarrassment. “Does Wilina know any combat magic?” she asks, after they pause to let a trio of courtiers go by.

“The challenge of studying war magic at the Carthaki emperor’s university,” Baird says in reply, “is that the emperor thinks it rather poor manners for students to study war magic at his university and not remain to share their skills with the empire. So, no,” he continues as they walk up another wide series of steps, “Wilina does not throw fire or call down lightning or blow giant craters in the ground.”

“Pity,” says Alanna. “I imagine she probably doesn’t have a sword as part of her formal wardrobe. But at least I know from her spars with Buri that she’s good with knives.”

“Don’t worry about Wil,” he tells Alanna quietly. “She doesn’t do conventional war magic for very good reasons, but she has a _lot_ of creative protections at her command.” Faithful makes a _mrrrrrrp_ that sounds like agreement, and then wriggles out of Baird’s arms to go sit on Alanna’s feet.

Alanna takes her leave with something about going to send her sword and mail for polishing, and Baird, after checking in that the last of the extra supplies have arrived at the infirmary and been taken in hand by two of his trainees, leaves the palace early to ride back home.

The sun shines on the golden haze that rises up from the city of Corus at noon in high summer. Baird waves politely at the guardsmen on the palace walls as he guides his horse out the gates and around on the road north and down the hill towards the river and the city.

Once Jonathan is bound to the magic of the crown and the land, and bolstered by the power of the Dominion Jewel, Roger’s window of opportunity to easily wrestle the throne from his cousin will have largely closed, at least so far as magical intervention goes. Assuming things go well, the noble houses will fall into line to pledge their loyalty—or else have to make a full break for independence and trigger a war.

(Wilina is almost certain her Minchi relatives won’t be leading that charge, although when she pressed Tómnat on the matter, the response she got was that they absolutely weren’t going to _start_ a civil war—but they wanted to maintain their position so that if a civil war happened to begin, they could _finish_ it. “Pragmatic, if not very reassuring” was how Wilina described it.)

The bells of the temple of the Great Mother ring out for the second hour of the afternoon as Baird rides slowly through the temple district. Part of the problem, Baird thinks, lies in how isolated the Conté line has become from the rest of the kingdom. More royal heirs are good insurance for foreign alliances, but also for making the kinds of marriage allegiances that bind kingdoms together too. It’s not just that Lianne and Roald had only one child—the line has been thinning for generations.

And, as Baird realizes, part of the reason he and Wilina have been drafted as royal chaperones is because there are no Contés other than Jonathan left to supervise his courtship or to someday stand behind him and his bride before the temple altar. Jonathan’s friends and contemporaries are certainly a heroic and remarkable bunch, but they can’t fill in for a missing generation. (Baird is twelve years older than Jonathan and their last familial link is at least five generations back—that he’s one of the best choices to fill a role usually reserved for close senior family members is, honestly, disturbing.)

However, thinks Baird, that’s a problem for the future. For right now, it is a perfect, beautiful high summer day, and other than sharpening a sword and getting a good night’s rest, there is nothing more they can do. The die is cast, the players and pieces set in motion. They’ll face the rest when it gets here.

Baird lets himself in to the house, and makes his way upstairs. Through the half-open door into the library, he can hear Wilina tapping her hand against the table and the scratch of a pencil on a page. She has the wide windows open to catch the fickle high summer breeze and send the ivy leaves growing up the outside wall rustling against a clear blue sky. This is the quietest their house has ever been, without the children and with only two men-at-arms outside on the gates.

He comes into the room, shedding bag and over-robe and boots as he goes, to wrap his arms around his wife’s shoulders from behind and lean his chin on the top of her head, until she twists and turns her face up to kiss him instead.

“I love you,” he says, simply, instead of a greeting.

She kisses him again. “I love you too.”

The papers spread out in front of her are covered with numbers in double-entry, reflecting some kind of market exchange—she sets down her pencil across a line of figures and tilts her head back farther, looking up at him. Even with the windows open, it’s warm in here, and he can see little beads of perspiration gathering in the fine hair near her temples, the flush that rises on the skin above the neckline of her gown. She smells like the cedarwood incense in the shrine and like _Wilina_ , and now she’s standing up from her chair and the edge of the table presses against the back of his thighs as she leans in to kiss him—

Some hours later, they retreat together to the cold baths in the lowest level of the house, which are built into the foundations of a much older building, although the baths at least have been renovated in the last ten years. Wilina strips off her robe and plunges in, ducking under the water and resurfacing like an otter, while Baird follows at a more sedate pace.

The old-style baths are set deep in the earth so that they can have space for vaults in the ceiling and high clerestory windows that bring dappled light from the garden into the space, while still keeping things private. This is, truth be told, one of the most exhausting parts of the entire house, which makes it also Baird’s private metaphor for problems like kingdom-wide reform. Every choice they make, every change they enact has to be deliberate, balancing progress against custodianship of the past (and the risk that a wall might fall down or a priceless ancient treasure be unearthed).

Baird stretches his arms over his head, feels the cool water all around him. Nearby, Wilina has climbed back out and is lying on her side on a towel laid over the stone at the edge of the cold plunge, although as he watches, he can see the relaxation sliding away while she goes back to puzzling something over in her head. Then she sits upright and swears.

“I am such an idiot.”

“Wrong, but I’m curious what makes you say that,” Baird says, and then ducks to avoid the splash of water she sends in his direction. Wilina actually does look worried though, so he wades over to lean his arms on the edge near her feet.

“The secondary iron market,” Wilina says, looking bleak. “It’s a secondary market because it’s already processed material, not the raw resources, and you buy it to melt it down for other building projects. A significant portion of the material comes from old bladed weapons, and this year there ought to have been a big excess when the southern army replaced their polearms and standard-issue knife blades.”

She leans forward to put her head in her hands. “The rising price, the shortages but only in strange places and quantities, it’s not because someone wanted to buy iron and work it for nefarious purposes—they wanted the _things_ in the shipments. Because you can’t buy lots of weapons without someone noticing and asking questions, but you sure as hell can buy a lot of garbage that _consists_ of weapons.”

“And…?” asks Baird when she seems to have finished.

“There’s an entire armed force out there somewhere in Corus,” she says. “Probably. All the local iron purchasing stayed roughly in the area. That was what disguised it for so long.” 

“Tell Myles, tell the Lord Provost,” Baird says. “And then stop worrying about it. We can’t do anything else at this stage.”

“It would have been nice to have seen this _more_ than a handful of days before the event in question,” Wilina groans. “Or to be able to track who was doing the buying. Also the army should melt its garbage down before putting it out for re-sale—I’m surprised this hasn’t happened before.”

“Wil,” he says, catching and holding her gaze. “You figured it out. All we can do now is tell the people who are responsible for the _other_ people with weapons, and be prepared ourselves. And to do that, we should relax and rest while we can.”

She stares at him for a moment and nods, conceding the point. “Maybe put some clothes on first,” he adds as she rises to stand.

Wilina strikes a dramatic pose that shows off her full figure beautifully, and then heads towards the door, sweeping up her embroidered robe from the bench as she goes. “I will just be a minute, my love.”

“I will wait here.”

She’s walked out the door already, but then pops her head back in. “Plus, who knows what other problems we’ll figure out, if we keep inspiring each other.”

Baird makes sure his theatrical groan is loud enough for Wilina to hear it. Judging by the laugh that rings back down the stairs, he’s successful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wilina's story at the beginning is a very deliberate shout-out to Faith Erin Hicks' amazing graphic novel trilogy The Nameless City. (Go read it.)
> 
> The clear caraway-flavored liquor is brennivín. Reliable sources inform me that you absolutely can drink it either in shots or as a sipping liquor. Pairs well with conversation or absolutely destroying your family in board games. 
> 
> Bread and Meat is an actual truly delicious sandwich shop borrowed from real life, found in proximity to a very real and very old university.


	7. Chapter 7

The morning of the coronation, the July full moon, dawns hot and white, the sun cutting through the early morning haze while the early morning birds and insects are in full voice. Wilina bathes, fixes her hair, clasps the necklace she’s wearing today around her neck, then pauses to run a polishing cloth over her earrings. Today’s jewels are not Queenscove or Haryse or ha Minch heirlooms—they’re modern pieces, commissioned by Baird and fashioned by currently-practicing craftsmen. The earrings are based on the one survivor from a favorite pair she’d bought in the market in Thak City, remade in vastly finer materials, Ekallatum sapphires and gold replacing cheap blue enamel and tin. 

Also, they’re shaped like owls.

Wilina closes the hooks and hears that faint whisper, the skirl of laughter, and the feeling of suspension, the world waiting and balanced on a knife’s edge. _Justice_ , she thinks, _justice and some kind of resolution_. There’s no further answer, but she doesn’t expect one—if today turns out as she fears it might, the gods will have done all they can to guide or shape events already. This one’s all in mortal hands. They’ll have to see it through. 

Baird helps her do up the various laces and hooks, delicately settling the sheer silk overskirt with its layers of fine embroideries so it doesn’t wrinkle. Wilina pulls on her lightest, oldest mastery robe over top, not to wear to the ceremony but just to protect the silks as they ride to the palace. Someday, they’ll have enough graduates of the university that mastery robes will be an appropriate piece of court fashion, but until that point, it serves her purposes to be a little more subtle. (Also, given how warm it is already, one less layer of fabric is the right idea.)

There’s excitement running through the richly dressed crowd that spills over the risers and packs into the wooden pews of the Hall of Crowns. Near the front, where Wilina and Baird take their seats just down from the Naxens. Myles and Eleni, along with Thayet, Buri, and Rispah, are seated in the row behind them. George isn’t sitting with them, but Wilina assumes he’s around in disguise somewhere. 

Even as the sound of drums and bells and a chanted introit rings out from the musicians ensconced high above the crowd in the galleries, Wilina can’t quell the tense feeling that’s building in her stomach. There’s something off, something in the crowd that she’s noticed subconsciously and now she can’t kick the feeling that something is about to go wrong.

The procession. Jonathan making three formal bows before the altar, one for each aspect of the Goddess. Another long bow to Mithros. Another long, low bow towards the Black God’s shrine, in memory of his late parents, whose responsibilities he now takes up. Nothing goes wrong.

Ritual offerings of grains and incense. Nothing goes wrong.

Jonathan kneeling before the chief priestess of the Goddess in Corus and a senior Mithran priest from the great monastery in the southwestern coastal hills. Nothing goes wrong.

The blessing of the crown. The blessing of the king-to-be. Nothing goes wrong.

Wilina has to smile when she sees Alanna hiding her seventh yawn in as many minutes, where she’s standing off to one side of the altar between Raoul and Gary. There’s a handful of nobles who are also standing around the edges, obviously further back than Alanna and the other people who will be called on to actually _participate_ in some way, but still pressing forward and standing in the aisles in ways that Wilina would find a little bit much even if they were squires and pages…

There’s a break in the chanting and the bells as the priestess lifts the crown high before lowering it down to rest on Jonathan’s— _the king’s_ —head. Which is truly moving and also magically interesting, since there’s some kind of ill-defined silvery flare around Jonathan as he connects to the magic inherent in the land—except Wilina _cannot_ stop thinking about the nobleman who’s standing nearest Alanna, because there’s something wrong about him, some detail that is intimately familiar and also wrong. But there is nothing unusual about him—just an ordinary boring nobleman, with the hilt of an old-style Tortallan military-issue knife visible under his half-cape, which he is inexplicably wearing indoors in July…and that’s when _everything_ goes wrong.

Alanna shouts “Jonathan!” and the entire room heaves and shudders under the pressure of a massive earthquake. Glass breaks in the high windows, tiles crack and splinter as the floor under their feet rolls like water and smaller pieces of mosaic rain down from the vaults above the altar. The air is filled with a haze of grey powdery stone dust and flecks of broken plaster. Wilina and Baird end up on their knees, arms out to brace each other and to try to protect their heads. Faintly, they hear Alanna shout again, saying “Guard the king!” and as Wilina looks up in her direction, she sees a hazy golden figure racing out the far door without a backward glance.

Jonathan flares with power, still kneeling despite everything, and that’s when the suspicious nobleman whips aside his half-cape to reveal a loaded cross-bow that he points directly at the king.

Buri sees him, and launches a throwing-knife in his direction, but suddenly they’re everywhere, the oddly-unattached men in dark colors or concealing capes sporting weapons that were retired from military stores however many years ago before a critical mass accumulated that could be sold on the secondary iron market, and _that’s_ why the off-ness also felt familiar, of course Wilina would still recognize those distinctive hilts even in a glance…

 _Not the time, Queenscove_ , she thinks, and struggles to her feet.

The crowds are jamming the exits out of the hall, but don’t seem to be drawing the attention of the attacking force, which is good, but plenty of people seem to have either frozen in place or decided to fight, which is…honorable but also less good. Especially as another ominous crack ripples across the plaster far overhead and Wilina has a moment to wonder about the structural stability of this part of the palace. Both Gareths, Myles, the Lord Provost, and a segment of the King’s Own are racing to the altar to protect Jonathan, struggling to stay on their feet and keep moving forward as a second strong tremblor hits.

Tortall is not in any way, shape, or form geologically-active. Wilina has been to too many talks to believe for a _second_ that this is a natural, non-magical event. (Micatongue once organized a whole lecture series on the magical study of earth processes and kept setting the lantern-slide projector on fire, which then meant Wilina had to attend an entire lecture series on earth processes to _stop them from setting the projector on fire_ , _thanks Ilan._ )

Therefore: this is magically-induced seismic activity.

Thom’s Gift is corrupted—he can’t do this kind of spell-work without causing himself significant harm. Since he’s working with Master Si-Cham to prevent and reverse the harm he’s already done to himself, that seems like an odd mid-stream switch.

Therefore: assume it’s Roger.

Therefore: Roger has the Gift, either his own or he’s drawing on Thom’s corrupted magic, which—sure, why not. Regardless of where it comes from, Roger (a) has some magical power again and (b) is choosing to use it to try to bring down the ceiling on his royal cousin’s head.

However, even if Roger is behind the enormous earthquakes shaking the palace or Thom is in a position to stop him, neither one appears to be in the Hall of Crowns this morning, making them officially a less pressing problem for Wilina than the large collection of heavily armed people who _are_ in this hall for the express purpose of killing the king. Also, Alanna’s still not back. Therefore: stay put, work on this problem first.

“Here, just in case—” says Rispah, breathlessly shoving a knife at Wilina before she takes off in a crouched run towards an unsuspecting archer, holding yet another very large dagger in her outside hand. Nearby, Buri and Thayet are negotiating a similar exchange, before Thayet turns, with Buri’s short sword in hand and the two women start moving towards another knot of fighters. Eleni is ducking into the shadow of a pillar as she pulls a thread from the hemming of the sleeve of her gown and starts throwing knots while fixing her gaze on another set of archers across the room.

Some of the new attackers are wearing what looks like Eldorne uniforms—and maybe the colors of Fief Tirragen on some of the others? Wilina has always been terrible at noble livery—and they’re pouring out from behind the drapery around the altar to clash with men of the King’s Own. Two go down quick, pulled to the side by their fellows as blood starts to spread across their blue and silver uniforms. The men in the crowd with crossbows are starting to spread out and seek higher vantage points, and _that_ is going to be a significant problem.

Baird and Wilina squeeze each other’s hands and then let go. Baird moves sideways quickly towards the fallen men from the King’s Own, while Wilina tucks herself against the stairs that lead to a ceremonial pulpit halfway up the next supporting column of this part of the hall and starts working on the pressing challenge of stopping the cascade of arrows and crossbow bolts coming from the attackers who have managed to get clear and gain enough height to shoot at the king and his protectors from a good distance.

Contrary to the illustrations in children’s books and illuminated manuscripts, it’s very difficult for a single mage to construct large magical barriers on the fly. A net is more effective and easier than a shield; a hard shield that will reject both projectiles and magic needs to be built with a sympathetic model, anchored in magical stones, and preferably composed by multiple spell-casters. Her barrier spell system at Mother of the Fields is anchored in ordinary and semi-precious stones that have been mortared into the foundations, which is part of why she usually tweaks the spell structure within those boundaries and not the whole barrier itself.

Also, if Wilina creates a hard barrier over the altar group, she traps them all in with the roiling mess of flaring magics that are beginning to become visible all across the floor, including what seems to be the combined and corrupted Trebond and Conté Gifts. That seems like a very bad idea.

But what she can do is a net that is a variant on the rat-transporting mostly-stable gateway spell. Wilina sketches the entry symbols in the air with her hands and _shoves_ , sending the glittering net into the air to slide across the trajectories of five arrows headed towards a group of the King’s Own, while Rispah’s dagger comes in very handy for slicing her finger open to write the exit half of the gateway on the floor near her feet. Two seconds, a _pop!_ and a smell like burnt feathers, and the arrows are in an awkward stack inside the diagram.

Blood drips on one of the symbols she’s written, and the next load of arrows come out in a burned, twisted heap, which is why imprecision and sign errors are usually _bad_ , but perfect for her purposes right now, because Wil does not want to leave excess armament around.

Wilina works out the details and refines her system as more Tirragen and Eldorne fighters pour into the room. This barrier-net-gate combination needs significant testing and development. Maybe she can ask Baird and the boys to throw apples while she throws shields and nets across the orchard— _not right now, focusing_ —and then all she can do is try to keep on her feet as the third massive quake rolls through the room.

Nearby, Eleni’s spell-work flattens another cluster of archers and Roanna of Naxen simply destroys four men with a pike, which is—unexpected, to be sure. The archers are armed with short bows and crossbows. The standard arrows are easier to stop further away. It doesn’t have to be a clean block—the net can wiggle mid-air and still snag enough of the arrow to pull it in through the gate. Crossbow bolts are heavier and faster and need more stabilizing terms that make the net move more slowly.

Right before the fourth quake, Wilina sees the magic swirling around Jonathan abruptly changing color. There’s purple fire swirling around the king’s arms and clinging like tendrils of giant kelp. The crown light and Jonathan’s Gift are still blue and silver, but darkening as they combine with the distinctive light of Alanna’s magic. And then there’s a third color rising up Jonathan’s back and coming around his head and neck like a cloak that is horribly a brownish-red color—like Eleni saw on All Hallows, like the “blood-moon that turned inside out and exploded” described by Raoul, like what you’d get if you combined Roger’s orange Gift with Thom’s purple and fucked the wavelengths in the way Lazamon of Berat describes in _not_ those words in his chapter “On the relation between the radiating and absorbing powers of different Gifts for light and heat.”

Wilina feels like she retrospectively deserves a better exam mark in “Elementary Principles of Magical Theory” if she can make these kinds of analytical links while the roof is caving in.

Huge chunks of plaster and stone break free from around the cornices of the pillars and shards of glass and tile spew out from the destroyed reliquaries and shrines in the side alcoves. More of the archers are beginning to draw in close—partly because the shooting is harder with all the dust and debris in the air, but also because the apse seems to be more structurally secure than the nave and side aisles, so there’s less of a risk of being crushed to death by falling masonry _and_ they’re that much closer to killing the king. 

When the earth starts to heave for the _fifth_ time, everyone fighting in the Hall of Crowns stops fighting, braces themselves against the ground, and eyes the cracks rippling across the high ceiling vaults.

Wilina’s mouth tastes like sand, and fear, and the creeping thirst and taste of iron that says she’s beginning to draw on her magic a little too much. There’s dust in her mouth and in her nose, and when she impatiently swipes a hand across her face to try to clear it, there’s a wide pink streak of mixed blood and plaster dust left on her skin.

She can’t make a big enough shield at this point to protect everyone left in the Hall from the roof if it collapses all the way. Or even protect them from the falling stones of the vault-ribs—some of the keystones look loose in the arches about two-thirds of the way down the nave, near where Thayet and Buri are sheltered behind a column. The archers are beginning to change tactics and come closer, which means she needs to take the fight directly to them.

Also, find ways to cause maximum damage with minimal power, Wilina thinks as she pinches her nose again to try to get the over-exertion bleeding under control. This is no longer the moment for elegant combat solutions—this is the moment to become an agent of chaos.

She throws clouds of inky black smoke into archers’ faces. She throws clouds of pale smoke that smell like rotting squid, which is one of those spells you pick up from asshole pranksters in first year classes and never plan to _use_ but also choose to never forget. She sends balls of static lightning—not a weapon of war, more on the level of scraping wooly socks against a carpet and touching a fork—flying down the room, to flash like signal flares in the faces of combatants. There are hexes and sigils to throw bricks and debris into the air, and there’s certainly plenty of material available.

Behind her, Baird whirls up from where he’s kneeling with his hand on the chest of a wounded guardsman from the King’s Own, with his sword in his off hand to slash at an attacker who’s gotten in close. Wilina follows up with a sigil for movement that smacks the man in the chest and sends him tumbling over the uneven ground, to stay down.

Then she’s slamming into the ground as Baird grabs her to pull her out of the way of three very well-shot arrows, sent by other adherents of the school of tactics that says “When in doubt, shoot the mage,” and its corollary, “When there are multiple mages, shoot the one that’s most annoying.” She sends three squid bombs back along the arrows’ trajectory and then ducks behind the carved front of a line of pews.

Wilina gets off two more arrow nets, a squid bomb, and a few handfuls of static lightning before she tries again and finds that absolutely nothing happens, except for her vision blacking out around the edges. Which is actually good, since she puts her head down to breathe for a moment and hears another arrow go whistling just over her head. She’s _really_ made someone mad.

This is an extremely messy battle plan, between the archers, the men with blades, the magical leeching spell (or whatever is going on with Alanna and Thom and Roger that’s lead Jonathan to be covered in the power of their combined Gifts), and the gigantic earthquakes. But also, what comes next after this? Does Roger or Delia have an army in reserve to handle the next stage of their takeover? Is Josiane’s uncle, or whatever relation of hers is in charge of the Copper Isles, going to send forces to secure the coast? Are they going to move the administrative capital of the kingdom regardless so it doesn’t matter if the entire palace and the city of Corus are crushed into dust?

Wilina feels like this isn’t doing much to make the case to anyone that the kingdom will be better off under Roger’s rule, or Delia’s or Josiane’s or whoever else thinks they’re going to finally end up holding the parcel when the music stops.

There seem to be somewhat fewer attackers, but they’re also pushing in towards the central group clustered around Jonathan on the altar. Wilina turns on her knees just in time to see George Cooper vault over a pile of rubble and thrust the Dominion Jewel into Jonathan’s hands. There’s a rush, and a buzzing that Wilina can feel through her palms and her knees and even her teeth as Jonathan grabs the Jewel, gathers hold of its magic and his Gift and the power of the kings bound into the crown of Tortall.

He takes up all the threads of the lands of the kingdom—deserts, mountains, deep forests, lakes and rivers, rolling fields and rambling thickets, dusty quarries and muddy roads, village squares and busy marketplaces, hillside monasteries and coastal castles—and makes them into an unbreakable net, with himself and the Jewel as the fire and the hammer and the forge, and throws it over the length and breadth of Tortall and— _holds_.

The ground still shivers beneath their feet, but Jonathan is linked to the land now, and he’s holding Roger and his gods-cursed stupid plan back—or this part of it, anyhow. Some of the clusters of attackers who are nearest to the exits take the chance to turn and run, dropping their weapons in their haste if there’s enough opportunity. Others, though—cut off from escape or maybe more dedicated or murderously foolish than the rest—are shifting position and bringing their attack fully to bear on the new king and the ragged defenders who circle him on the altar of the Hall of Crowns.

Raoul and Liam Ironarm and a group of the King’s Own are in pitched battle with the one cluster of attackers that seems to actually be growing instead of shrinking. The Lord Provost and other men from the King’s Own are working to consolidate the terrain they control, and judging by the paths they move open and the opportunities they _don’t_ take, they’re also preparing for backup loyalist forces to arrive—probably regular army, as fast as they can move from their barracks outside the city bounds.

Eleni is still nearby, working thread magic and binding clusters of attackers into large angry knots of men and arms. Rispah is guarding her, a dagger in each hand, while also positioned to watch the rear approach to the altar and Jonathan’s back. Gareth the Younger is next to Harailt and protecting the king on the far side while Myles and Gareth the Elder cover the angles closest to Baird and Wilina, holding on to the advantage of extra height from the edge of the altar platform as they strike down fighters who try making a run directly at the king.

Then Gareth (the Elder) is crying out and grabbing at his chest as he collapses, leaving Myles to tangle with a giant attacker in Tirragen colors wielding a two-handed broadsword. Baird runs for Gareth, turning him on his side and pressing a glowing hand to his chest. Wilina thinks about Rispah’s dagger, which she still has clutched in one hand, and decides to try something fairly stupid.

There’s another big man running at Myles’ other side, and Wilina gapes for a half-second as the scholarly, genteelly shaggy spymaster drops his guard, switches his blade into his opposite hand to score a slashing blow across his oncoming opponent, and then switches _back_ to deliver a perfect twisting stab to finish off the first fighter. It’s a beautiful move, although admittedly one that left Myles open to several wounding strikes, including a long shallow cut across his lower ribs and a deep gash to his right thigh. 

She’s trying to think rationally about what she can do against a six-and-a-half-foot-tall warrior armed only with a dagger while trying to also cover for the definitely wounded Myles when George Cooper comes flying at the man from his blind side, a danger in one hand and a sword in the other, just as Myles misses his step and Wilina grabs him out of the way of a wild stab. Two more arrows go whistling nearby to shatter against the stones beside her.

Wilina looks over her shoulder towards Baird and Gareth, but they’ve already gone, probably to the infirmary. Which is probably where Myles belongs too, she thinks, as he staggers again and almost falls on top of her. She catches him with an arm under his shoulder and helps lower him down to the floor and hopes that the archers momentarily stop paying attention, even while he fights to get back up.

“Myles! _Myles_ —oh for the love of chaos,” Wilina shouts at him. “I can’t do anything anymore, and you can’t do anything anymore—what are you going to do, _bleed_ on your enemies and then lay them out when you collapse on top of them? Death by preventable blood loss is _very stupid_ , come with me _now!_ ”

Above them, George whirls and stabs, finishing off Myles’ last foe—“As a mercy to the poor man,” George says, coming around to kneel at Myles’ other side and help him get his arm over Wil’s shoulders so she can support his weight. George looks battered, bruised and bloody, but alive with the heat of battle.

“We’ll be alright,” he shouts in her face. “Get him out of here!”

Myles is still protesting, although he’s also brought a hand around to hold the slash across his ribs, and he seems to have gotten kicked there too, so pretty soon he’s saving his strength to concentrate on moving one leg forward at a time as they pick their way together through the debris littering the floor. They’re trying to move from pillar to pillar, staying out of the easy lines of fire, and trusting that the archers will be concentrating on the king and his defenders, sensing that they’re reaching the final moment, when everything is make-or-break in a pitched fight.

Their luck is good, but not quite good enough, and then Myles is trying to grab Wilina’s arms to keep her upright as her knees buckle and her whole mind goes white from the sharp, bright pain of an arrow finally finding its mark in the back of her left shoulder.

“Oh, for _fuck’s sake_ ,” she says, to Myles’ wide-eyed, blood-smeared astonishment, and she grits her teeth and hauls them the last ten steps forward, through the side door half-concealed by the “Allegory of the Gentle Mother” tapestry, now rent with arrows and showing some burn marks. Then it’s through the door and out of the Hall of Crowns, where Myles and Wilina stumble to a halt against a temporary barricade set up by a squad of the Tortallan army, which appears to be coordinating with other forces by mage-fire on how to safely take back the room.

Arms grab Myles, hold her upright as she staggers and the punching pain of the _arrow in her back_ makes her knees go weak. The squad leader is another one of her cousins, Vanget, with his craggy ha Minch nose and the slashing marks of two scars across the bottom left side of his face, and he breaks off speaking with his sergeant to look at her and say, “Wil, did you get _shot_?”

“Ehh, _details_ ,” she replies, although at that point she finds her knees are folding and she’s starting to sag to the floor. Can she still move her fingers? She thinks she can still move her fingers. There’s something magical building in the atmosphere and also resonating up through the tiles underneath her knees, and either it’s Alanna defeating Roger or vice versa and then everything is going to get much, much worse.

“Symes and Warric, you’re dispatched to take Sir Myles and cousin Wil here to the infirmary and then rendezvous with Mandash’s squad in the north hall on your way back…Wil— _Wilina_ , focus.”

Vanget is pinching her ear with his thumb and forefinger like she’s five and he’s trying to distract her from a splinter in her finger. She groans and says, “I hate you so much right now.”

“Good. If you’re angry, you’re not going to let a stupid arrow stop you from coming to get me back. Now, _go!_ ” Vanget shouts, and Symes-Warric-whoever is hauling her up bodily and making for the next hallway turning and the rising steps towards the palace infirmary.

There’s more soldiers guarding the corridors and the infirmary, and even as they come around into the main antechamber, Wilina sees healers joining up with squads and leaving at a quick trot back towards the Hall of Crowns.

That’s fine and correct, except if Roger is about to be victorious, in which case they are really, really going to need all the healers they can find, and they will need to _not_ be buried in a heap of rubble along with the corpse of the new king. Although when Wilina tries to pull herself upright more to say this to—someone, anyone, Myles maybe—the arrow shifts again and pain blanks out those thoughts, and—

Somewhere, there’s cheering coming from somewhere in the palace, and then the joyful ringing of the bells. Wilina wonders who was foolhardy or brave enough to climb a bell tower in an earthquake, and then decides it doesn’t matter.

Then things get a bit blurry.

“You try to do anything to block the pain?” asks Imogen of Whitethorn, either seconds or hours later as she presses Wilina to lean forward against the exam table in the infirmary room and starts poking at the wound.

Wilina’s vision goes black and fuzzy around the edges, even though Imogen’s touch is mostly gentle. (She’s a healer-midwife, who doesn’t really do battlefield medicine. Although Wilina supposes this qualifies as an all-hands-on-deck emergency.)

“You know I can’t heal,” she grinds out through clenched teeth once she can see again. “Didn’t—want—to—make—it—worse.”

“That, I can help you with,” says Imogen, and a warm dark red glow suffuses everything as Wilina lets her eyes close, although—

“Don’t put me under completely—until we—find out—what happened,” she tells Imogen firmly, or at least tries, as firmly as she can.

She feels Imogen sigh more than she hears it, but the warm hand resting on her back moves to follow particular nerve points, just blocking sensation there. “Okay, if that’s what you need.”

“It is,” Wilina says mulishly, and then she gives up on talking and planning for a bit, as Imogen’s spells take hold and she gets a chance to luxuriate in the relative absence of pain. She can feel Imogen doing something around her back, but it’s not really important, because she can also hear a familiar footfall in the hallway outside and a voice cutting through low murmuring.

Then, Baird’s kneeling down so their heads are on the same level, his face very pale underneath his freckles and more than a few flecks of dried blood. He’s thrown a healer’s robe over his formal clothing and acquired even more blood stains, although naturally his hands are clean when he brings them up to cup her face.

“Did we win?” she asks him, even though she’s pretty sure she knows the answer.

He’s nodding. “We won. Now will you please let someone put you under so that someone can cut that arrow out?”

“Oh, fine,” mumbles Wilina. “That seems reasonable,” and then she feels like she’s falling into warm red darkness.

They made it. It’s okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up for canon-typical violence and a (highly localized?) magical natural disaster.
> 
> The title of Lazamon of Berat's treatise is based on the title of a very real study from 1860 by Gustav Kirchhoff on the nature of black-body radiation. This is, unfortunately, not even close to being the nerdiest thing I've ever done. (Something something sufficiently esoteric nineteenth-century thermodynamics is indistinguishable from magic something something.)


	8. Chapter 8

The funeral is in the gardens behind the Black God’s temple in Corus. It’s a much less formal affair than the royal observances that nearly everyone here has attended earlier in the year, but lighter, under the gentle blue July sky, with a soft breeze rippling the leaves on the cypress trees that surround the open space where ceremonies are held.

Alanna lights the pyre for her twin herself, and then steps back as the flames lick higher around Thom’s body.

For a moment, Alanna seems to stand alone, staring as the flames leap higher and higher over the pyre. And then George is coming up beside her, and Thayet and Jonathan on the other, and Gary and Raoul and Buri, and the gruff old soldier Coram, who apparently raised Alanna and Thom and is now engaged to Rispah, all standing close. There are people from the palace and the city, nobles and commoners, knights Wilina barely knows. A sound like rustling wings passes behind them, although when Wilina looks, she doesn’t see anything except for a single owl feather that floats slowly down to earth.

Wilina finds that Myles is gripping her hand hard in his. They’re both seated; Myles has been using a walking stick to get around while his leg wound heals, and it’s leaning against the back of his chair. Wilina still has her left arm in a sling, which helps her remember not to move her shoulder too much. There are tears glimmering in Myles’ eyes, and Wilina feels her own throat get tight.

It’s been a week since the coronation and Thom’s death. This is Wilina’s first time going further than the baths in Queenscove house since she woke up in her own bed, groggy and propped up on pillows, the day after the coronation with Baird snoring gently where he was stretched out, fully-clothed, on top of the blankets next to her. 

_I’m sorry, Thom_ , she thinks, closing her eyes as the smoke rises towards the clear air. She wishes they could have met earlier, that she could have snapped him up before Roger and his acolytes got their chance, or before he spent so many years isolated and feared in the City of the Gods. Thom made his own choices, but he was so very alone—terrified, brittle, brilliant, alone.

_We’ll do a better job_ , she promises, _finding the bright ones like you. We’ll do a better job of helping them figure out they’re not all alone._ There are a lot of reasons to support a university, lots of reasons that have more relevance for most people and most kingdoms, but—that’s going to be another reason that she’ll hold close to her heart.

Afterwards, she and Baird walk home slowly, testing their strength—the palace healers, Baird included, have spent the last week working through the backlog of surgical cases from sword and arrow wounds, crush injuries, and the like. Wilina hasn’t built up much of a resistance to healing as of yet—an advantage of _not_ being a knight, thank you Alanna—but everything is still tender, including the puffy red starburst of incision marks that will certainly scar, and staying upright for an extended period of time is more exhausting than it has any right to be. It doesn’t matter—as long as she doesn’t spike a fever or show other signs of infection, they’ll ride for Queenscove and their children by the end of the week.

The afternoon before the day they’re due to leave, a message comes from Myles to meet at Olau house in an hour, which—Myles is never hasty or even especially mysterious. Wilina thinks through the possibilities, and then takes a basket and a stout knife out to the garden to cut sunflowers. (Then she has to call Baird because it turns out the sunflowers in their garden are a tenacious and sturdy bunch, and sawing through their stems is definitely a two-handed job.) It’s worth it when they arrive at Olau house just behind the priestess of the Goddess and Wilina can surprise Eleni by presenting her with a bridal bouquet.

“They didn’t want to wait,” confides George to Wilina, after they’ve watched the priestess bind Eleni and Myles’ hands together with green and gold ribbon and then walk together around the fire in the courtyard of Olau house. Alanna is leaving in a few days for the solace of the wind and sand and her friends in the desert, and her face is still a little drawn, but she’s also laughing and hugging first Myles and then Eleni and then everyone is laughing and cheering as Myles and Eleni finally get to officially kiss as husband and wife.

The next day, Baird and Wilina rise before dawn and set out, riding hard for home.

It’s a perfect late summer afternoon when they finally ride up the road to Queenscove castle. The enormous white fluffy clouds are limned with gold in the piercing blue sky, and the warm breeze rustles the golden grain and the poppies in the fields and carries the sound of laughter in the fields, the steady turning of the mill, and the other noises of the village that wraps around the river at the bottom of the hill. The orchards are full of ripe, glossy fruit, and the sun glows on the green-gold leaves of the rows of grape vines tucked into the terraces that wrap around the hills on either side of the river.

Then they’re riding through the gates and along the curving drive, hoofbeats muffled by the well-maintained sandy path, as the main residence comes into view, settled into the gardens, and the large wooden door nestled in the center under the carved griffins on the lintel is swinging open wildly as the boys come rushing out, Graeme doubling back to reappear hauling Neal with his hands wrapped around Neal’s chest under the arms, and Cathal running as fast as his legs will carry him.

Later, later, after the boys are in bed (and actually asleep—Cathal keeps hopping out of the nursery to hug his parents), Sorcha, Maryse, Wilina, and Baird all gather in the coziest of the family sitting rooms. Wilina has a poultice on her shoulder and a bit of a fever and absolutely no intention of staying upright any longer than she needs to. (This wound-recovery business is the worst. She’s been complaining with Myles about getting ganged up on by their loving and exasperated healer spouses.)

“So what happened with the conspirators in the end?” asks Sorcha as she and Maryse settle on one of the squashy sofas and Wilina stretches out across the entire chaise longue across from them, with Baird sitting on a pouf nearby. “We heard the—let’s call it, the simplified version. Tell me yours.”

“Well, trials are still ongoing,” says Baird, stretching out his legs across the comfortably worn carpet and leaning his head back against Wilina’s hip. “The only leader alive still is Delia of Eldorne—I think the crown plans to ask for lifelong imprisonment, rather than traditional punishments for treason.”

“And huge fines,” says Wilina without opening her eyes. “The family’s going to be beggared for at least a generation, because the king stipulated it has to come from their personal purse, not the land improvement funds or the fiefdom accounts. Same thing with Tirragen.”

“One lingering thread,” says Baird with a sigh, “is that we don’t actually have a diplomatic relationship with the Copper Isles, so it’s a little difficult to know what to do about the late Princess Josiane.”

“Although given that she was in Corus without diplomatic representation of her own,” says Wilina, “the Copper Isles seems not to have known what to do with her either. That was a bizarre affair, start to finish. That’s not how you do marriages of state. Even _I_ know that.”

“As for Roger,” Baird stops to sort of sigh and laugh at the same time, with his head in his hands. Wilina reaches over with her good hand to tousle his hair. “A reliable witness states he was stabbed—technically impaled, I guess? And then fell into his own spell and was immolated.”

“Also,” adds Wilina, “the spell structure burned itself into the marble of the catacombs level, so the king is having that section repaved and the stone ground down into dust and separated for disposal. Probably in a volcano if he can find one.”

“Sounds thorough,” says Maryse, while Sorcha hums in agreement. The summer breeze is still warm and heavy with the scent of fruit and growing things as it blows through the open windows, along with the song of night insects. Wilina is going to have to work very hard not to fall asleep here and now.

“How’s the harvest looking?” she asks instead, and then has to blink her eyes open all the way when Sorcha and Maryse don’t seem to be saying anything. They’re instead apparently having an intense non-verbal conversation, until Maryse shrugs and gestures for Sorcha to take the lead.

“Well, it was going to be fine, despite all the rain and the late spring,” begins Sorcha. “And then after the July full moon, we started seeing grey rot on some of the vines—which, fine, sometimes that happens. But now it’s starting to crop up in some of the other fields.”

“Which shouldn’t even be possible,” says Maryse, leaning forward. Baird is abruptly alert too, leaning his elbows on his knees as she continues. “You shouldn’t get grey rot like that on grain—it’s a grape disease! And it’s not all the fields, and it’s not all the plants, and that just makes even less sense.”

“I thought maybe you’d really aggravated somebody and they’d put a curse on our land,” says Sorcha to Baird. “But the dead Conté duke was our first pick, and we figured grey rot was a little pedestrian for him—I mean, it’s hardly a plague or a world-ending earthquake.”

“And also if he died on the day of the coronation,” adds Maryse before she trails off, because now Baird and Wilina both look a little lightning-struck.

“Could be an after-effect,” says Baird, doubtfully, twisting around a little to look at Wilina. “What—”

“Oh fuck, I hope this isn’t from the Jewel,” Wilina says as she pushes herself fully upright. “That would be bad. That would be _so_ bad.” Except unfortunately it’s totally possible. Doing anything takes power—doing anything as big as stopping a magical earthquake takes _a lot_ of power. And if the Jewel is knitting itself into the natural magic of the kingdom and the land, why not take that power from a similar source—oh, this could be really bad.

“Well, let’s definitely not try to solve this _right_ now,” says Sorcha. “Seriously, the two of you just rode from Corus on the heels of another crisis. It’s just a bit of grey rot, we’ll figure it out.”

Outside, they can hear wings beating and a faint hooting—owls on a night hunt. Sorcha’s right—they’re definitely too tired to solve this problem tonight.

“Did I tell you,” begins Wilina, “about the owls?”

* * *

Once, not that long ago, there was a king in the Eastern Lands who fought an evil sorcerer for control of his throne and won. At the darkest hour, when all hope was lost, the king reached out with the power of the Dominion Jewel, brought to him from the Roof of the World by his most loyal friend—

“—and her magical cat!”

—and her magical cat, and four brave and clever warriors—

“That’s Aunt Alanna and Aunt Thayet and Aunt Buri, right?”

“Do you want to hear this story, or not?” Wilina says, turning to raise her eyebrows at Neal, who is almost five and completely unrepentant.

Once, not that long ago, there was a king in the Eastern Lands who fought an evil sorcerer for control of his throne. At the darkest hour, when all hope was lost, the king reached out with the power of the Dominion Jewel, brought to him from the Roof of the World by his most loyal friend, four clever and brave warriors who yes, included the future Queen Thayet, _and_ a magical cat. And with the magic of the kingdom and the Dominion Jewel, the king stopped the evil sorcerer’s spell from tearing the kingdom apart.

But to do this, the Jewel had to draw its power from somewhere, since saving the kingdom was an immense and heavy task. And it found that power in the life-magic of the grain in the fields, the fruit in the orchards, the vines in the vineyards, and even in the cheese in the cellars. And so when the harvest came, the kingdom realized the high and heavy cost.

So the king and the queen—who married quietly in the autumn after someone pointed out that a famine was an excellent reason to have a very small and very simple wedding—called together their advisors and friends and representatives from every group in the kingdom, from the herdsmen in the southern desert to the farmers in the northern mountains, from the guilds and the merchants and the temples and the nobles—

“And Mages’ Council and the university!”

And especially the Council of Mages and the university, because we were very determined and also had already started working on understanding how the magic of the Jewel worked, and we have a duty to use all our cleverness and our enthusiasm for figuring things out, and because we also liked having food to eat, and because a problem for some people in the kingdom is a problem for _all_ the people in the kingdom.

And so the king and the queen bought food from Maren and Tusaine and the Yamani Islands, and they borrowed money from the banks in Tyra, and they used the money to build roads and dredge the rivers and to build and pay for new schools, because infrastructure development is a great way to invest in the future and combat agrarian unemployment—

“For the record,” says Graeme from the doorway, poking his head in, “no one else has bedtime stories that use the words ‘agrarian unemployment,’ Mother.”

“What boring childhoods your fellow pages must have had,” Wilina says back, mildly. Graeme laughs, waves, and walks away towards his own bedroom.

And then one day the Great Mother Goddess came to the chief priestess of Her temple in Corus in a dream and said, “Long ago you mortals turned away from My true face, and you have reaped the consequences. But now, I see how you have grown, and strived, and how you now seek to make your kingdom wiser and stronger in My name. And while the challenges will be many and the road ahead fraught with peril, this I say to you—I will not turn My face from My people again.”

“And that’s why we don’t have earthquakes?”

“Well, I am not qualified to speak on the theological aspects, but we don’t have a lot of earthquakes because Tortall isn’t terribly geologically active, unlike, say, the Yamani Islands—” Wilina cuts herself off and narrows her eyes at Neal. “This is a distraction to draw out story time, isn’t it?”

Neal has the grace to look a _little_ shifty. “Maaaaaaybe…” and then he breaks off into giggles as she tickles him.

“Tomorrow, you can come with me, and we’ll see if Ilan has more rocks from Scanra that you can look at, and if you ask nicely, maybe they’ll tell you more about earthquakes, non-magical and otherwise.”

It’s late July in Corus, and it’s been four years since Jonathan’s coronation and the day of the fight in the Hall of Crowns. It’s only early days, still, on the time scale of people and kingdoms and glaciers and gods, but—everything feels different now.

There are two princes and one princess—Roald, Kalasin, and the newly-born Liam. The Queen’s Riders have been deluged with applicants since the day they began. Girls can train for the knighthood—although Wilina and Thayet still wonder how many years it will take for one to actually sign up. (Kalasin is only two, _but…_ ) The university has expanded from one building to two to seven, and planning for more is already underway. Their first class of mastery students should begin graduating any day, and now they’re beginning to even attract students from Carthak itself.

There are still challenges—Alanna’s spent more days in the saddle than in her own home in the past four years, easily, since the work never ends for the king’s champion, and they all probably work too many hours, and the conservative faction in Corus is _especially_ peeved about some new levies to raise funds for improving bridges, and she’s not certain Wyldon of Cavall is really the best pick for palace training master, although she sees what Jonathan is aiming at politically, but—they’re getting there.

She tucks Neal in and blows out the lamp, goes to Cathal’s room and takes the pencil out of his hand and clears the papers covered with sketches of flying machines off the counterpane where he’s fallen asleep while drawing. She waves to Graeme, who’s reading in bed, luxuriating in being home for the summer after his first year in pages’ training at the palace.

In the library, Baird is reading, with eight-month-old Jessamine asleep on his chest. “Is she—” Wilina starts to ask.

“She’s actually asleep. It’s a midsummer miracle,” whispers Baird back. “I can try to put her to bed, but if she wakes up again, I’m prepared to stay and sleep sitting upright for as long as it takes.”

“I can’t believe it took us this long to end up with a baby who truly believes sleep is only for the weak.”

Together, they manage to slowly ease Jessamine into her crib in the nursery, and then stand outside the mostly closed door, waiting for the inevitable wail—

And no sound. “Thank the gods,” mutters Baird as they sneak back down the hallway, fall into the library, and laugh silently in each other’s arms. 

The next morning, after breakfast, Wilina takes Neal by the hand to walk into the city. The market stalls in the Daymarket are colorful, with fresh paint and new awnings. There’s more variety of people and food, and more and more sellers of the cheap broadsheets and books that have proliferated in the last four years. There are more posters and more wall murals—bright patterns, political messages, advertisements, and above all, portraits of the Goddess, especially as Warrior and Mother of Darkness.

They stop briefly where the wall of the Cat and Sickle is still decorated with the mural of the Mother of Darkness, newly freshened up, and with a new drawing of a black cat curled up by the Mother’s feet that looks _a lot_ like Alanna’s Faithful. “This is my favorite,” Neal declares, and when she asks why, he points squarely. “Magical cat.”

The Queensbridge has been widened so now there’s room to walk in both directions. It’s shaping up to be a hot summer day, but the water of the Olorun is still surprisingly clear—they can even see some of the shapes of fish swimming under the bridge. (Another Jewel after-effect, they’ve learned—seemingly the elemental forces have a great affection for fish.)

In the square outside the main gates to the university, there’s a juggler who’s set up shop with an odd and growing medley of items that keeps increasing as he asks the crowd to toss him more things—hats, a ball, an ear of corn. Wilina keeps a firm hand on Neal’s shoulder before he dives into the crowd to see better or, more likely, starts interrogating the juggler at length, but they stop to watch and applaud when the very tall young man deliberately misses his catch and sends the entire set of items tumbling down on his head.

This is the future they fought for, believed in—a future that is full of fish and sunlight and where she’s probably going to have to stop university students from juggling balls of light in the main library _again_ , because there’s always someone who thinks they definitely have enough fine control to ignore the rules. Where there are lady knights and better roads and art and public lectures that fill the room to overflowing. Where the laws of noble privilege are being slowly, painfully reconsidered, all while the rest of the kingdom races ahead.

The Great Mother Goddess, in all her aspects, has turned her eye on Tortall again. Whatever the future holds, they’ll face it.

Neal waves and Wilina smiles up at the owl carving above the gate, and together they walk into the university.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the soundtrack to the last segment, listen to Beoga's "In a Rocket." 
> 
> In lieu of canon information about Queenscove, I've stuck it somewhere in eastern Tortall near Naxen and Goldenlake and given the whole region the climate of the Loire Valley. Queenscove castle is based on the château du Clos Lucé, built in the Loire in the fifteenth century and best known as the house of Leonardo da Vinci. 
> 
> Heartfelt thanks to Tamora Pierce for creating this universe that I've been going back to for entertainment and solace for over twenty years.


End file.
